> On Aug 15, 2024, at 1:54 PM, John via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> ...
> That said - and I have no idea whether this actually influenced
> anyone's decision for any system anywhere ever - one hard advantage of
> little-endian representation is that, if your CPU does arithmetic in
> serial fashion, you don't have to "walk backwards" to do it in the
> correct sequence.
It certainly did. A storage startup I worked on had all its code targeted for
a little endian machine, and when it came time to consider moving to other
chips the availability of little endian mode was a major point. We did briefly
consider one big endian only chip, fortunately elected against it (PA Risc,
which was acquired by Apple before they could ship their product). So we
stayed with MIPS, and I already mentioned some of the complications even with
supposedely little endian capable devices.
paul
