Appeal No. 1999-0041
Application 08/475,669
at the lowest memory address; the latter scheme, at the
highest memory address.
While the big endian scheme would store the hexadecimal number
A02B as A02B, for example, the little endian scheme would
store it as 2BA0. Apple Macintosh computers use big endian;
IBM personal computers (PCs), little endian.
Compatibility is needed between different types of
computers. For example, users of IBM PCs cannot generally
share computer programs and data with users of Apple Macintosh
computers, and vice versa. Heretofore, bi-endian computers
have been used in an attempt to deal with the endian problem.
Such a computer can be made to execute either big endian tasks
or little endian tasks, but not both types of tasks together.
Switching the computer's endian mode requires special software
that executes very close to start-up. When the computer is
started, it is “told” whether it will be running in a big
endian mode or a little endian mode. Thereafter, it executes
all tasks in the specified endian.
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