Computer System Architecture

A numeral system (or system of numeration) is a mathematical notation for representing a set of numbers by symbols in a consistent manner. It can be seen as the context that allows the numeral “11” to be …

Analog Signals An analog or analogue signal is any time continuous signal where some time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity. It differs from a digital signal …

Representation of Digital Signals Digital systems do not store numbers the way humans do. A human can remember the number 4.5 and understand that it represents a quantity. The digital system does not have this …

The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, is a numeral system that represents numeric values using two symbols, usually 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix …

Binary Conversion Unsigned Binary Counting The simplest form of numeric representation with bits is unsigned binary. When we count upward through the positive integers using decimal, we start with a 0 in the one’s place …

In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave (a continuous-time signal) to a sequence of samples (a discrete-time …

Hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. Its primary purpose is to represent the binary code in …

Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD) is an encoding for decimal numbers in which each digit is represented by its own binary sequence. Its main virtue is that it allows easy conversion to decimal digits for printing or display …

The use of binary counting sequences is common in digital applications. For example, an n-bit binary value can be used to identify the position of a rotating shaft as being within one of 2n different arcs. As …

Basic Concepts behind the Binary System To understand binary numbers, begin by recalling elementary school math. When we first learned about numbers, we were taught that, in the decimal system, things are organized into columns: …

Binary Subtraction Just as with addition, we’re going to use the decimal numbering system to illustrate the process used in the binary numbering system for subtraction. There are four possible cases of single-bit binary subtraction: 0 …

Floating Point Arithmetic Binary numbers can also have decimal points, and to show you how, we will once again begin with decimal numbers. For decimal numbers with decimal points, the standard way to represent the digits …

Hexadecimal numbers (base 16) can be added using the same method. The difference is that there are more digits in hexadecimal than there are in decimal. For example, in decimal, adding 5 and 7 results in 2 with …

Unless you are an electrical engineer, an understanding of the operation of transistors is unnecessary. One level above the transistors, however, is a set of basic building blocks for digital circuitry. These building blocks are called logic gates, and …

The expression X = A * B reads as “X equals A AND B”. The multiplication sign stands for the ANDoperation, same for ordinary multiplication of 1s and 0s. The AND operation produces a result of 1 occurs only for the single …