Big-endian vs. little-endian machines

9
votes

I understand what the difference between the two are. Looking at the entry in Wikipedia it seems like litte-endian format is gaining ground and this is not as much of an issue as it used to be.

HP-UX on Itanium is the only newer processor that is using big-endian format. Most others are using little-endian, which is an indication that industry is standardizing on this. Is this true? Am I missing something? Do any of these differences exist for mobile OS like iOS and Android?

1
endianness
I always though only Intel and those copying Intelwere using little-endian. Perhaps Intel won the religious war. Just noticed bi-endian in your link, I would guess that's the final answer. – kenny
@YavorShahpasov, That is not true. ARM cores can be configured either way and most of them seem to be little. – reirab
The statement that itanium is only big-endian is wrong. it supports little endian as well as big endian – steve

1 Answers

5
votes

The ARM architecture runs both little & big endianess, but the Android, iOS 6, and Windows Phone platforms run little endian. 95% of modern desktop computers are little-endian.