Question

Consider the following code: Assume that the register contains the address and the data at address is What value is stored in on a big-endian machine? Consider the following code: Assume that the register contains the address and the data at address is What value is stored in on a little-endian machine?

Answer 1

The question is about understanding the concept of endianness in computer memory, differentiating between big-endian and little-endian data storage, and how to interpret the value stored in memory based on the machine's endianness.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question you've asked primarily deals with understanding how data is stored in computer memory with respect to endianness. Endianness refers to the order of byte storage for multi-byte data types such as integers in computer memory. A big-endian machine stores the most significant byte of a word at the smallest memory address and the least significant byte at the largest. On the other hand, a little-endian machine stores the least significant byte of the word at the smallest address and the most significant byte at the highest.

To determine the value stored at a certain address in memory, it's important to know the endianness of the machine. This information dictates how you should interpret the bytes stored in memory. For example, if the memory address register points to the beginning of a 4-byte integer and the machine is big-endian, the first byte (starting from the register address) is the highest-order byte. If the machine is little-endian, that same byte would be the lowest-order byte.