Question

What is the difference between big endian and little endian?

Option 1: Big-endian boots faster than little endian
Option 2: A big-endian machine stores the most significant byte first. A little-endian machine stores the least significant byte first.
Option 3: Big endian and little endian yield the same hex structure

Answer 1

The correct answer is Option 2: big endian systems store the most significant byte first, while little endian systems store the least significant byte first.

Step-by-step explanation:

The difference between big endian and little endian refers to the order in which bytes are stored in computer memory. Specifically, Option 2 provided is correct: in a big-endian system, the most significant byte (MSB) of a word is stored at the smallest memory address, and the least significant byte (LSB) is stored at the largest.

Conversely, a little-endian system stores the least significant byte of a word at the smallest memory address, and the most significant byte at the largest. This difference does not affect the speed of booting, nor does it yield the same hex structure; the way data is represented in memory differs between the two.