Re: [boost] BOOST_BIG_ENDIAN

From: Matt Hurd (matt.hurd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-25 18:45:30

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 11:29:04 +0900, Mattias Flodin <flodin_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
> It gets worse. IA-64 supports switching endianness at runtime. :-) See e.g.
> http://developer.intel.com/design/itanium/manuals/245317.pdf
> section 4.4: "Accesses to memory quantities larger than a byte may be
> done in a big-endian or little-endian fashion. The byte order for all
> memory access instructions is determined by UM in the User Mask
> register."
> 
> The user mask can be changed at user-level program's discretion and
> thus isn't a function of the OS platform used either. I suppose the
> least incorrect thing to do here would be to define it depending on
> the default for the particular OS/compiler used.

FWIW, ARM (+Xscale), Alpha, modern MIPS (Hitachi SH too), Sparc,
PowerPC, i960 all have some dual endian ability.  Probably others too.

Not sure about the run-time configurability like ia64.

Regards,

Matt Hurd.