little-endian

adj. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or
32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is
stored little-end-first ). The PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and
Intel microprocessors and a lot of communications and networking hardware
are little-endian. See big-endian , middle-endian , NUXI problem. The term
is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most
often, bits within a byte.

