Advanced Embedded Systems Interview Question:

Do you know what is Endianness of a system and how do different systems communicate with each other?

Submitted by: Muhammad

☛ Endianness basically refers to the ordering of the bytes within words or larger bytes of data treated as a single entity.

☛ When we consider a several bytes of data say for instance 4 bytes of data,XYZQ the lower byte if stored in a Higher address and others in successively decreasing addresses, then it refers to the Big Endian and the vice versa of this refers to Little Endian architecture.

☛ Intel 80x86 usually follows Little Endian and others like IBM systems follow Big Endian formats.

☛ If the data is being transmitted care has to be taken so as to know as to which byte,whether the higher or the lower byte is being transmitted.

☛ Hence a common format prior to communication has to be agreed upon to avoid wrong interpretation/calculations.
☛ Usually layer modules are written so as to automate these conversion in Operating systems.
Submitted by: Muhammad