big-endian
adjEtymology See the etymology for endian.
1
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences Storing the most significant byte of a multibyte number at a lower address than the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.
- Most big Unix machines are big-endian, but Intel x86 machines and older Digital machines are little-endian.1999, W. Curtis Preston, Unix Backup and Recovery, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 132:
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Networking, Physical sciences, Sciences Transmitting the most significant byte of a multibyte number before transmitting the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.
- The network octet order for all protocols in the TCP/IP protocol suite is big-endian. A big-endian computer system need not perform any conversion in building TCP/IP protocol headers from integers stored in its memory.1994, James Martin, Joe Leben, TCP/IP Networking: Architecture, Administration, and Programming, Prentice Hall, page 203:
- Synonyms
- network byte-order
- Antonyms
- little-endian
- Related terms
- endianness, endianless