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| en:multiasm:cs:chapter_3_11 [2026/02/27 00:58] – [Table] jtokarz | en:multiasm:cs:chapter_3_11 [2026/03/29 18:24] (current) – [Endianness] ktokarz |
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| <caption>Illustration of Little and Big Endian data placement in the memory</caption> | <caption>Illustration of Little and Big Endian data placement in the memory</caption> |
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| | Big-endian is mainly used in network protocols, where the most significant bytes are sent first. In modern processors, the dominant order of data placement in memory is little-endian, although some processors (including ARM) can support both modes. Big endian is more human intuitive, but little endian makes it possible to access the same data with different sizes at the same address. It is important for fast data type casting (for example, treating a 32-bit integer as a 16-bit integer) because the starting address doesn't change. Some processors support conversion between little- and big-endianness with special instructions. |
