Systems and methods for transferring data to maintain preferred slot positions in a bi-endian processor

Abstract

A bi-endian multiprocessor system having multiple processing elements, each of which includes a processor core, a local memory and a memory flow controller. The memory flow controller transfers data between the local memory and data sources external to the processing element. If the processing element and the data source implement data representations having the same endian-ness, each multi-word line of data is stored in the local memory in the same word order as in the data source. If the processing element and the data source implement data representations having different endian-ness, the words of each multi-word line of data are transposed when data is transferred between local memory and the data source. The processing element may incorporate circuitry to add doublewords, wherein the circuitry can alternately carry bits from a first word to a second word or vice versa, depending upon whether the words in lines of data are transposed.