Why the EAX register of x86 is called that
One thing directly connected to this history is why the x86 is little-endian. As the article explains, the 8008 was designed for the Datapoint 2200 terminal. The 8008 was intended as a compatible replacement for the existing Datapoint processor, which was built from simple TTL chips.<p>To reduce the chip count, the Datapoint 2200 used a serial processor, which processed one bit at a time, so you had a 1-bit ALU among other things. One consequence is that you have to start with the low-order bit when doing addition, so you can handle carries. And for 16-bit values, you also have to start with the low-order byte. This forces you into a little-endian architecture.<p>Thus, to be compatible with the Datapoint 2200, the 8008 was also made little-endian. Unfortunately, Intel was very slow creating the 8008, so Datapoint had moved on to a parallel 74181-based architecture and didn&#x27;t want the 8008. Intel decided to sell the 8008 as a stand-alone product, essentially creating the microprocessor industry. As the article explains, the x86 grew out of the 8008, so x86 also inherited the little-endian architecture