McGill University - School of Computer Science

Motorola and the VME bus use "high endian" architectures, in which more significant data is located first in memory, namely at numerically lower addresses. Intel x86 processors use "low endian" terminology, wherein less significant data appears first in memory.

Motorola:

16-bit integer 1234 hex (4660 decimal) is stored in memory as...

   Location 1000 : 12 hex
            1001 : 34 hex

32-bit integer 12345678 hex (305,419,896 decimal) is stored as...

   Location 1000 : 12 hex
            1001 : 34
            1002 : 56
            1003 : 78

Intel:

16-bit integer 1234 hex (4660 decimal) is stored in memory as...

   Location 1000 : 34 hex
            1001 : 12

32-bit integer 12345678 hex (305,419,896 decimal) is stored as...

   Location 1000 : 78 hex
            1001 : 56
            1002 : 34
            1003 : 12

In both cases, a text string "HELLO" would be stored as...

   Location 1000 : H
            1001 : E
            1002 : L
            1003 : L
            1004 : O
            1005 : 00 hex