From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Rod Whitby Subject: Why run ixp4xx LE? (Was: [PATCH] Intel IXP4xx network drivers v.2 - Ethernet and HSS) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 14:50:38 +0930 Message-ID: <46415A26.6080209@whitby.id.au> References: <464034CF.20700@wpkg.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, Tomasz Chmielewski , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Krzysztof Halasa , linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk To: Michael-Luke Jones , Alexey Zaytsev Return-path: Received: from out1.smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.25]:49081 "EHLO out1.smtp.messagingengine.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754909AbXEIFWS (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 May 2007 01:22:18 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Michael-Luke Jones wrote: > On 8 May 2007, at 09:48, Alexey Zaytsev wrote: > >> I was always curious, why do people want to run ixp4xx in LE mode? What >> are the benefits that overweight the obvious performance degradation? > > Debian. > http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/ And also out-of-kernel drivers for things like webcams, which have been naively written for x86 little endian and have no concept of endian neutrality. In some cases it's just easier to run LE instead of fighting with the driver code. BTW, for the consumer-level IXP42x devices (like the NSLU2) the performance difference is *completely* overwhelmed by slowness in the rest of the system. -- Rod