A computer architecture in which the most significant byte has the lowest address and so is stored big end first.
Many processors, including those from Motorola and Sun, certain RISC processors, the PDP-11, and the IBM 3270 series are all big endian. The term comes from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, in which wars were fought over whether boiled eggs should be opened at the big end or the little end.
See also holy wars; little endian.