Endianess of architectures
From: Webopedia:
The adjectives big-endian and little-endian refer to which bytes are most significant in multi-byte data types and describe the order in which a sequence of bytes is stored in a computers memory.
The terms little-endian/big-endian is taken from an anectode from the novel Gulliver's travels. The Lilliputians were separated by those who broke their egg on the little end (becoming little-endians) and those who opened it on the big end (becoming big-endians).
| Bits | little endian | big endian |
|---|---|---|
| 32bit | m68k | |
| 32bit | sparc | |
| 32bit | powerpc | |
| 32bit | arm | |
| 32bit | i386 | |
| 32bit | s390 | |
| 32bit | mipsel | mips |
| 32bit | sh3 | sh3eb |
| 32bit | sh4 | sh4eb |
| 32bit | vax | |
| 64bit | sparc | |
| 64bit | alpha | |
| 64bit | amd64 | |
| 64bit | ia64 | |
| java | jvm |
Even though the above lists architectures either as little or big endian, some architectures are really endian-agnostic (or "bisexual"). They can be treated to act as a little or big endian CPU. PowerPC, MIPS and ARM are such CPUs. In these cases the above lists the endianess Debian uses for its GNU/Linux variant.
More information can be found here: