A student writes. The question is interesting, because Computer people can't make up their minds about the answer, so every designer gets to do it the way he/she thinks is "logical," even if the other half of the population thinks the opposite is logical. Seems like we could all agree on something this simple, but we can't. On #2 part 2c, Dr. Patt hinted that the low 16 bits are in address 6, = and the high 16 are in 7. Here's my problem, It would seem logical Ah! That word LOGICAL. Unfortunately, ISAs don't come from nature, they come from the brains of humans, and humans ain't perfect. that the first address would be the leftmost 16 and the second address would = be the rightmost 16, HOWEVER, from what I understand, the definition of = low, as used it "low order bit", is the one with the least value. and = that would make the low bits the rightmost bits. which of these = interpretations are correct? =20 <> So, yes, if I want to store a 32 bit value in two successive locations, say locations whose addresses are A and A+1, I store [15:0] in A and [31:16] in A+1. I do it that way, because the computers I grew up with do it that A+way. There are a lot of companies who think that the LOGICAL way to do it is to store [31:16] in A and [15:0] in A+1. There was a time when companies used to go to war over which was the LOGICAL way to do it. Bits [31:16] are the high order bits of the value, or what has been colloquially called the Big End of the number. Bits [15:0] are the low order bits, that is: the Little End. In my note, I said we will store the little end first (i.e., in A) whereas the student wants to store the big end first (i.e., in A). In the debates of the early 1990s, I would be referred to as a Little Endian, and he would be called a Big Endian. The debates were referred to as Endian Wars, and were a great source of both passion and humor for us all. You would think we could standardize on something as ridiculous as this. It really does not matter. But we can't. Intel IA32 is little endian. IBM 370 is big endian. Many (all?) Motorola microprocessors are big endian. Even in the same company (for example, Digital Equipment Corporation, which was gobbled up by Compaq) had some big endian and some little endian ISAs. But then a lot of Americans won't accept meters and Kilograms either. And the French won't accept a Keyboard that would allow me to type without looking at the keyboard whenever I am in Paris to find out where the tilda or ESC key is hiding. Oh, well.