Computer Architecture Questions Medium
Little endian and big endian are two different ways of ordering bytes in a computer's memory.
In little endian byte ordering, the least significant byte (LSB) is stored at the lowest memory address, while the most significant byte (MSB) is stored at the highest memory address. This means that the byte order follows the natural reading order of numbers in human language, where we read from right to left. Little endian byte ordering is commonly used in x86-based systems.
On the other hand, in big endian byte ordering, the most significant byte (MSB) is stored at the lowest memory address, while the least significant byte (LSB) is stored at the highest memory address. This is the opposite of little endian byte ordering and does not follow the natural reading order of numbers. Big endian byte ordering is commonly used in network protocols like TCP/IP.
The difference between little endian and big endian byte ordering becomes significant when data is transferred between systems that use different byte ordering. In such cases, data needs to be converted from one byte ordering to another to ensure proper interpretation and processing.