The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 14, 1995
Filed:
Sep. 27, 1983
Larry B Weber, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Earl A Killian, Los Altos, CA (US);
Mark I Himelstein, San Jose, CA (US);
Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for enabling a computer to run using either a Big Endian or Little Endian architecture is provided. The method and apparatus use the fact that XORing the lower two bits of a byte address in one architecture with a binary 3 converts that byte address to the equivalent byte address in the other architecture. The conversion method and apparatus is implemented in hardware by setting a bit in a status register indicating a Big Endian or Little Endian architecture in conjunction with an XOR gate which couples the byte address to binary 3. The conversion method and apparatus is implemented in software by scanning the instructions of the input for load and store instructions. The software modifies the instructions by taking the contents of the register and XORing the two least significant bits of the byte address with a binary 3.