Difference between revisions of "Endianness"
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Endianness is the term used to describe the byte order of data. |
Endianness is the term used to describe the byte order of data. |
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| − | Big-endian means data is being sent with the Most Significant Bit (MSB) first. |
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| − | + | Big-endian means data is being sent or stored with the Most Significant Byte (MSB) first. |
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| + | Little-endian means data is sent with the Least Significant Byte (LSB) first. |
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| − | Endianness matters, because the CRC changes when the byte is flipped from MSB first to LSB first. |
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| − | Typically, the endianess is determined by the type of data being transferred. |
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| + | A CPU always has an endianness, even for 8 bit CPUs. |
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| + | Any CPU stores data in units larger than just single bytes. The stored value can not also be looked at on |
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| + | a byte-by-[[byte]] basis. If the first byte is the LSB, then the CPU is said to be [[little-endian]]. |
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| + | If the first byte is the high order byte, it is said to be [[big-endian]]. |
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| + | Example: |
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| + | Let's look at a 32-bit CPU, storing the value 0x12345678 in memory: (memory shown in [[hex]]) |
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| + | Big endian: |
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| + | 12 34 56 78 |
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| + | |||
| + | Little endian: |
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| + | 78 56 34 12 |
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| + | For most CPUs, the endianness is fixed by design. For those CPUs, Little-endian is more popular. |
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| + | All x86 CPUs use little endian. On ARM processors, the endianness is selectable by the chip designer, |
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| + | but in reality again a vast majority of CPUs is little endian, making it the de-facto standard. |
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| + | Motorola processors such as Power-PC are big-endian. |
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| + | ==Internet== |
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| + | In the internet, the byte order is big-endian. This means that little endian processors are a slight |
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| + | disadvantagem as they need to swap endianness each time they write to a packet to be send or read from a received packet and kind of protocol information. |
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Latest revision as of 16:10, 7 July 2019
Endianness is the term used to describe the byte order of data.
Big-endian means data is being sent or stored with the Most Significant Byte (MSB) first. Little-endian means data is sent with the Least Significant Byte (LSB) first.
A CPU always has an endianness, even for 8 bit CPUs. Any CPU stores data in units larger than just single bytes. The stored value can not also be looked at on a byte-by-byte basis. If the first byte is the LSB, then the CPU is said to be little-endian. If the first byte is the high order byte, it is said to be big-endian.
Example: Let's look at a 32-bit CPU, storing the value 0x12345678 in memory: (memory shown in hex) Big endian: 12 34 56 78
Little endian: 78 56 34 12
For most CPUs, the endianness is fixed by design. For those CPUs, Little-endian is more popular. All x86 CPUs use little endian. On ARM processors, the endianness is selectable by the chip designer, but in reality again a vast majority of CPUs is little endian, making it the de-facto standard. Motorola processors such as Power-PC are big-endian.
Internet
In the internet, the byte order is big-endian. This means that little endian processors are a slight disadvantagem as they need to swap endianness each time they write to a packet to be send or read from a received packet and kind of protocol information.
