Why is x86 little endian?

x86 intel endianness cpu-architecture microprocessors
bfrog picture bfrog · Mar 3, 2011 · Viewed 29.7k times · Source

A real question that I've been asking myself lately is what design choices brought about x86 being a little endian architecture instead of a big endian architecture?

Answer

I. J. Kennedy picture I. J. Kennedy · Mar 11, 2011

Largely, for the same reason you start at the least significant digit (the right end) when you add—because carries propagate toward the more significant digits. Putting the least significant byte first allows the processor to get started on the add after having read only the first byte of an offset.

After you've done enough assembly coding and debugging you may come to the conclusion that it's not little endian that's the strange choice—it's odd that we humans use big endian.

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