The MIPS processor can be set to operate in either big-endian or little-endian mode. Consider the Load Byte Unsigned (LBU) instruction, which loads a byte from memory into the low-order 8 bits of a register and fills the high-order 24 bits of the register with zeros. The description of LBU is given in the MIPS reference manual using a register-transfer language as

where byte refers to the two low-order bits of the effective address and mem refers to the value loaded from memory. In the manual, instead of the word CONDITION, one of the following two words is used: BigEndian, LittleEndian. Which word is used?

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mem LoadMemory (..) byte VirtualAddress..o if CONDITION then GPR[rt] 024|| mem31 - 8 byte 24 - 8 byte else GPR[rt] 024||mem, + 8 x byte . byte endif