Number Systems
There are four number systems of
possible interest to the computer programmer: decimal,
binary, octal, and hexadecimal. Each
system is characterized by its base
or radix, always
given in decimal, and the set of permissible digits. For small sets, such as each of these,
we specify the set by listing all of its members; for example the set of ten
decimal digits.
Sets specified by listing all
items belonging to the set often present the items in some
sort of order, but that is not necessary, as sets are by definition unordered
collections.
Note that the hexadecimal
numbering system calls for more than ten digits, so we use the
first six letters of the alphabet. It is
preferable to use upper case letters for these “digits”.
Decimal Base = 10
Digit Set = {0,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}
Binary Base = 2
Digit Set = {0,
1}
Octal Base = 8 = 23
Digit Set = {0,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}
Hexadecimal Base = 16 = 24
Digit Set = {0,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F}
While we are more accustomed to
decimal notation for writing numeric values, we find that
they can be written in any base. Here
are the binary, octal, and hexadecimal equivalents of
the first seventeen non–negative decimal integers
Decimal Binary Octal Hexadecimal
(base 2) (base 8) (base 16)
0 0000 00 0
1 0001 01 1 Note that conversions from hexadecimal
2 0010 02 2 to binary can be done one digit at a time,
3 0011 03 3 thus DE = 11011110, as D = 1101 and
4 0100 04 4 E = 1110. We shall normally denote
5 0101 05 5 this as DE = 1101 1110 with a space
6 0110 06 6 to facilitate reading the binary.
7 0111 07 7
8 1000 10 8 Conversion from binary to hexadecimal
9 1001 11 9 is also quite easy. Group the bits four at
10 1010 12 A a time and convert each set of four.
11 1011 13 B Thus 10111101, written 1011 1101 for
12 1100 14 C clarity is BD because 1011 = B and
13 1101 15 D 1101 = D.
14 1110 16 E
15 1111 17 F
16 10000 20 10
Notation for Constants
Given the choice of at least four
possible values for the base of the numbering system
(2, 8, 10, and 16), how do we indicate which base is to be used to interpret a
constant
value, such as 011? This is a
valid number in each of the bases, though its value
depends on which base is being used.
Pure binary numbers will rarely
be used in these notes. When they are,
they will be
almost obvious, having only 0 or 1 as digits.
These constants will be noted by a small
subscript 2, as in 0112, the binary
equivalent of decimal 3.
For values written in octal,
decimal, and hexadecimal notation, these notes, along with
most other textbooks, use the notation of Java and C/C++ to indicate the choice
of base
values. Decimal values are written
simply as one would expect. Octal
constants are
prefixed by a leading “0” (zero), while hexadecimal
constants are prefixed by “0x”.
For
example:
value = 77 // This is the decimal value 77.
No special notation is used.
value = 077 // This is the octal value 077, equal to 7·8 + 7 = 62 decimal.
value = 0x77 // This is hexadecimal 77, equal to
7·16
+ 7 = 119 decimal.
Positional Notation and Decimal Numbers
Before
discussing number bases other than decimal, it would be helpful to use the
decimal
system to review positional notation, as always used to write integer values.
Positional
notation is formed using powers of the base.
These powers are denoted by
exponents, written as superscripts. For
integer representations, all exponents are taken
from the set of non–negative integers.
We review this notation.
Any
non–zero number raised to the zero power has value 1: N0 = 1, for N
≠ 0.
Here are some powers of the various bases.
100 = 1 20
= 1 160
= 1
101 = 10 21
= 2 161
= 24 = 16
102 = 10·10 =
100 22 = 2·2 = 4 162 = 28
= 256
103 = 10·100 =
1000 23 = 2·4 = 8 163 = 212
= 4,096
104 = 10·103
= 10,000 24 = 2·23
= 16 164 = 216
= 65,536
Consider
the value1453, commonly understood as “one thousand four hundred fifty
three”.
Specifically 1453 = 1000 + 400 + 50 + 3.
Written in terms of powers of ten, we see that
1453 = 1·103
+ 4·102
+ 5·101
+ 3·100. Similarly, the larger number 322,583,006
which
represents 3·108
+ 2·107
+ 2·106
+ 5·105
+ 8·104
+ 3·103
+ 0·102
+ 0·101
+ 6·100.
Positional Notation and Other Base Values
We are now
in a position to generalize the idea of positional notation. Consider 1453.
We have already seen the decimal evaluation of 1453.
If read as octal notation 01453 = 1·83 + 4·82 + 5·81
+ 3·80
= 811 decimal.
If read as hexadecimal notation 0x1453 = 1·163 + 4·162
+ 5·161
+ 3·160
= 5,203 decimal.
The value 1453 cannot be read as binary, because it has digits other than 0 and
1.
Which Base to Use?
The choice of the base to use is
made solely for the convenience of the person who must
examine or otherwise use the information.
In many courses, this person is the instructor
who must grade the homework and who prefers a more compact notation.
Almost always, decimal notation
is preferable when writing a computer program in any
language, such as COBOL, Java, C/C++, or even IBM assembler. The examples below,
which illustrate proper usage of other bases, are given without explanation.
1. Sometimes it is preferable to use hexadecimal
notation when writing software, known as
a device driver, used to control
external devices, such as printers and disks.
For example, one might write: device_mask
= 0xC040.
This line of code will set binary bits in
a device control register. The register
is seen to
have sixteen bits, with values set
as follows:
|
Bit |
15 |
14 |
13 |
12 |
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
|
Value |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Of course, one could just as easily
write this as device_mask = –16320 using decimal
notation, but most programmers would
prefer the hexadecimal. One might note
here that,
with the exception of classroom
exercises, very few programmers write device drivers.
2. Some
time it is necessary to examine the raw contents of memory. Thankfully, this is rarely
necessary as high–grade debuggers do the job for us. Again, the most common use
for this these days is the
assignment of vexing problems by overly zealous professors.
As
an example (to be explained later), here is the binary representation of the
real number
–0.75: 1011 1111 0100 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000
Note that the 32 binary bits are grouped
by fours for ease of reading. The
hexadecimal
notation is even easier to read: BF40
0000.
3. The choice of octal or hexadecimal notation
usually depends on the value to be
represented. Octal digits can be considered as short hand
for groups of three binary
bits, while hexadecimal digits are
short hand for groups of four binary bits.
Most values to be represented in either
binary or a variant of it are best considered as
values having 8, 16, 32, or 64
bits. As each of these lengths is a
multiple of four, the
most natural choice would be
hexadecimal notation. Consider the
example above.
Some older, and now obsolete, computers
had word lengths that were multiples of 3;
for these octal notation might be
preferred. The old PDP–8 used 12–bit
words, and
the old PDP–9 used 18–bit words,
represented as 4 or 6 octal digits respectively.
Note on History: This author is quite fond of mentioning obsolete computers,
among
them the
PDP–8, PDP–9, PDP–11, VAX–11/780, CDC–6600,
CDC–7600,
the Cray–1, and Cray–2. This is done to
show that there
were
actual computers with such–and–such properties.
Nothing
in this book requires any knowledge of such old favorites.
Note on Usage: The remainder of this book will usually ignore the octal base.
The fact that the bases for
octal and hexadecimal are powers of the basis for binary
facilitates the conversion between the bases 2, 8, and 16. The conversion can be done
one digit at a time, remembering that each octal digit corresponds to three
binary bits
and each hexadecimal digit corresponds to four binary bits. Conversion between decimal
and one of the other three bases is only a bit more complex.
As noted above, we shall focus
on binary, decimal, and hexadecimal numbers.
As octal
notation is rarely used these days, we shall not consider it further.
How to Group the Bits?
This is a
small problem that occurs in translations between binary and hexadecimal
notation.
As each hexadecimal digit stands for four binary bits, these two translations
(binary to hex
and hex to binary) are just matters of grouping bits. We begin by discussing integers.
Consider
the hexadecimal number BAD. We translate
digit by digit to obtain the binary.
Hexadecimal B stands for binary 1011, A for 1010, and D for 1101. The binary value
represented is 101110101101, better written as 1011 1010 1101.
Consider
conversion of the binary number 111010 to hexadecimal. If we try to group the
bits four at a time we get either 11 1010 or 1110 10. The first option is correct as the
grouping must be done from the right. We
then add leading zeroes to get groups of four
binary bits, obtaining 0011 1010, which is converted to 3A
as 0011 = 3 and 1010 = A.
Note that the padding of the leading 11 to the full four–bit 0011
is not strictly necessary,
as most readers are quite comfortable with interpreting binary 11 as decimal 3.
We shall
have occasion to do conversions involving binary and hexadecimal to the right
of the decimal point. Consider the
hexadecimal value 0.C8, which is 0.1100
1000 in
binary. Here the grouping is not a
problem; just represent each hex digit as four bits.
Consider
the binary value 0.111010, which represents the decimal value 0.90625
(think that 0.111010 stands for 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 0/16 + 1/32 =
29/32). When the digits
are to the right of the decimal, they must be grouped from the left and padded
out with
trailing zeroes so that each collection has four bits. Thus 0.111010 is converted to
0.1110 1000, or 0.C8. Note that leaving the value as 0.1110
10 might lead
one to consider the last grouping as decimal 2, which is likely to cause
confusion.
Unsigned Binary Integers
There are
two common methods to store unsigned
integers in a computer: binary numbers
(which we discuss now) and Packed Decimal (which we discuss later). From a theoretical
point of view, it is important to note that no computer really stores the set
of integers in
that it can represent in native form an arbitrary member of that infinite
set.
For each
of the standard formats (short, integer, long, etc.) there is a largest
positive value
that can be stored and a smallest non–positive value that can be stored. More on this later.
There is a common data type, usually called “bignum”, which allows storage of integers of
any size. You want a 10,000–digit
integer, you got one. However, this data
type is mostly
implemented in software with hardware assists, and is not a native type of a
standard CPU.
The
standard integer types are stored as collections of a number of binary bits;
thus an
N–bit integer is represented by N binary bits.
1110
1000 would be an 8–bit integer.
It is
easy to show that an N–bit binary integer can represent one of 2N
possible integer values.
Here is the proof by induction.
1. A one–bit integer can store 2 values: 0 or 1. This is the base for induction.
2. Suppose
an N–bit integer, unconventionally written as BN–1 … B3B2B1B0.
By the inductive hypothesis,
this can represent one of 2N possible values.
3. We
now consider an (N+1)–bit integer, written as BNBN–1 … B3B2B1B0,
where either BN = 0
or BN = 1. By the inductive
hypothesis, there are
2N values
of the form 0BN–1 … B3B2B1B0,
and 2N values of the form 1BN–1 … B3B2B1B0.
4. The total number of (N+1)–bit values is 2N + 2N = 2N+1. The claim is proved.
By inspection of
the above table, we see that there are 16 possible values for a four–bit
unsigned integer. These range from
decimal 0 through decimal 15 and are easily represented
by a single hexadecimal digit. Each
hexadecimal digit is shorthand for four binary bits.
In
the standard interpretation, always used in this course, an N–bit unsigned integer will
represent 2N integer values in the range 0 through 2N –
1, inclusive. Sample ranges include:
N = 4 0 through 24
– 1 0 through 15
N = 8 0 through 28
– 1 0 through 255
N = 12 0 through 212
– 1 0 through 4095
N = 16 0 through 216
– 1 0 through 65535
N = 20 0 through 220
– 1 0 through 1,048,575
N = 32 0 through 232
– 1 0 through 4,294,967,295
For most
applications, the most important representations are 8 bit, 16 bit, and 32
bit. To this
mix, we add 12–bit unsigned integers as they are used in the base register and
offset scheme
of addressing used by the IBM Mainframe computers. Recalling that a hexadecimal digit is
best seen as a convenient way to write four binary bits, we have the following.
8 bit numbers 2 hexadecimal digits 0
through 255,
12 bit numbers 3 hexadecimal digits 0 through 4095,
16 bit numbers 4 hexadecimal digits 0 through 65535, and
32 bit numbers 8 hexadecimal digits 0 through 4,294,967,295.
Conversions
between Decimal and Binary
We now
consider methods for conversion from decimal to binary and binary to decimal.
We
consider not only whole numbers (integers), but numbers with decimal
fractions. To convert
such a number, one must convert the integer and fractional parts separately.
At this
point in the text, we have yet to consider signed integers. The reason for the focus on
unsigned values is that all conversions between decimal and the other two
formats (binary
and hexadecimal) are best learned using unsigned values.
Consider
the conversion of the number 23.375. The
method used to convert the integer part
(23) is different from the method used to convert the fractional part
(.375). We shall discuss
two distinct methods for conversion of each part and leave the student to
choose his/her
favorite. After this discussion we note
some puzzling facts about exact representation of
decimal fractions in binary; e.g. the fact that 0.20 in decimal cannot be
exactly represented.
As before we present two proofs and let the student choose his/her favorite.
The
intuitive way to convert decimal 23 to binary is to note that 23 = 16 + 7 = 16
+ 4 + 2 + 1;
thus decimal 23 = 10111 binary. As an
eight bit binary number, this is 0001 0111.
Note that
we needed 5 bits to represent the number; this reflects the fact that 24
< 23 Ł
25. We expand
this to an 8-bit representation by adding three leading zeroes.
The
intuitive way to convert decimal 0.375 to binary is to note that 0.375 = 1/4 +
1/8 =
0/2 + 1/4 + 1/8, so decimal .375 = binary .011 and decimal 23.375 = binary
10111.011.
Most
students prefer a more mechanical way to do the conversions. Here we present that
method and encourage the students to learn this method in preference to the
previous.
Conversion
of integers from decimal to binary is done by repeated integer division with
keeping of the integer quotient and noting the integer remainder. The remainder numbers are
then read bottom to top as least
significant bit to first bit generated.
Here is an example.
Quotient Remainder
23/2 = 11 1 Thus decimal 23 = binary 10111
11/2 = 5 1
5/2 = 2 1 Remember to read the binary number
2/2 = 1 0 from bottom to top.
1/2 = 0 1
Conversion
of the fractional part is done by repeated multiplication with copying of the
whole number part of the product and subsequent multiplication of the
fractional part. All
multiplications are by 2. Read the
binary results top to bottom. Here is an example.
Number Product Binary
0.375 x 2 = 0.75 0
0.75 x 2 = 1.5 1
0.5 x 2 = 1.0 1
0.0 x 2 = 0.0 0
0.0 x 2 = 0.0 0
The
process terminates when the product of the last multiplication is 1.0. At this point we
copy the last 1 generated and have the result; thus decimal 0.375 = 0.011
binary. Note that
this conversion was carried two steps beyond the standard termination point to
emphasize
the fact that after a point, only trailing zeroes are generated.
0.375 = 0.3750 = 0.37500, etc. 0.011 = 0.0110 = 0.01100, etc.
Conversions between Decimal and Hexadecimal
One way to
convert is by first converting to binary.
We consider conversion of 23.375
from decimal to hexadecimal. We have
noted that the value is 10111.011 in binary.
To convert this
binary number to hexadecimal we must group the binary bits in groups of
four, adding leading and trailing zeroes as necessary. We introduce spaces in the numbers
in order to show what is being done.
10111.011 = 1 0111.011.
To
the left of the decimal we group from the right and to the right of the decimal
we group
from the left. Thus 1.011101 would be
grouped as 1.0111 01.
At this point we must add extra zeroes to form four bit groups. So
10111.011 = 0001 0111.0110.
Conversion to hexadecimal is done four bits at a time. The answer is 17.6 hexadecimal.
Another Way to
Convert Decimal to Hexadecimal
Some readers may
ask why we avoid the repeated division and multiplication methods in
conversion from decimal to hexadecimal.
Just to show it can be done, here is an example.
Consider the number 7085.791748046875. As an example, we convert this to hexadecimal.
The first step is to use repeated division to produce the whole–number part.
7085 / 16 = 442 with remainder = 13 or hexadecimal D
442 / 16 = 27 with
remainder = 10 or hexadecimal A
27 / 16 = 1 with
remainder = 11 or hexadecimal B
1 / 16 = 0 with
remainder = 1 or hexadecimal 1.
The whole number is read bottom to top as 1BAD.
Now we use repeated multiplication to obtain the fractional part.
0.791748046875 · 16 = 12.6679875 Remove the 12 or hexadecimal C
0.6679875 · 16 = 10.6875 Remove the 10 or hexadecimal A
0.6875 · 16 = 11.00 Remove the 11 or hexadecimal B
0.00 · 16 = 0.0
The
fractional part is read top to bottom as CAB.
The hexadecimal value is 1BAD.CAB,
which is a small joke on the author’s part.
The only problem is to remember to write
results in the decimal range 10 through 15 as hexadecimal A through F.
Long
division is of very little use in converting the whole number part. It does correctly
produce the first quotient and remainder.
The intermediate numbers may be confusing.
442
16)7085
64
68
64
45
32
13
But Why Do These Methods Work?
In
this optional section, we present some illustrative examples to indicate
why each of these
conversion methods work.
Conversion
of Integers: Decimal to Binary
Our
sample integer, used above, is 23 = 16 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 1·24 + 0·23
+ 1·22
+ 1·2
+ 1. To
generalize this to any number representable as 5–bit unsigned binary, we use
some algebra.
Let 23 = A4·24 + A3·23 + A2·22
+ A1·2
+ A0, where A4 = 1, A3 = 0, A2 = 1,
etc. Now begin
the repeated divisions by 2, noting that we track only whole numbers.
(A4·24
+ A3·23
+ A2·22
+ A1·2
+ A0) / 2 = (A4·23
+ A3·22
+ A2·2
+ A1), rem = A0.
(A4·23
+ A3·22
+ A2·2
+ A1) / 2 = (A4·22
+ A3·2
+ A2), rem
= A1.
(A4·22
+ A3·2
+ A2) / 2 =
(A4·2
+ A3), rem
= A2.
(A4·2
+ A3) / 2 =
A4 rem
= A3.
A4 / 2 =
0 rem
= A4.
Continuation of the process will
generate only leading zeroes, reflecting the fact that the
decimal value 23 is binary 10111 = 010111 = 0010111 = 0001 0111, etc.
Conversion
of “Fractional Parts”: Decimal to Binary
Our sample “fractional part”
(the author does not know a better term) is 0.375. Since this
conversion moves a bit quickly, we use here another value: 0.65625 = 1/2 + 1/8
+ 1/32.
Let 0.65625 = B1/2 + B2/22 + B3/23
+ B4/24 + B5/25, with B1
= 1, B2 = 0, B3 = 1, etc.
Now begin the repeated multiplications, tracking only the “fractional part”.
(B1/2
+ B2/22 + B3/23 + B4/24
+ B5/25) · 2 = B1
+ (B2/2 + B3/22 + B4/23
+ B5/24)
(B2/2 + B3/22 + B4/23 +
B5/24) · 2 =
B2 + (B3/2 + B4/22 + B5/23)
(B3/2 + B4/22 + B5/23) · 2 = B3
+ (B4/2 + B5/22)
(B4/2 + B5/22) · 2 = B4 + B5/2
B5/2 ·
2 =
B5
Continuing this will lead to
trailing zeroes, the value in binary being either 0.10101 or
0.101010, or more conventionally 0.1010 1000.
What
about Other Bases?
The methods above apply to
conversion between any two radix values, though they are
probably difficult to use for conversions from any base other than decimal (as
we are quite
familiar with decimal arithmetic). For
us, the only other base is hexadecimal.
Consider our sample number 7085
= A3·163
+ A2·162
+ A1·16
+ A0, with A3 = 1,
A2 = 11 (B in hexadecimal), A1 = 10 (0xA), and A0
= 13 (0xD).
(A3·163
+ A2·162
+ A1·16
+ A0) / 16 = (A3·162
+ A2·16
+ A1), rem = A0.
(A3·162
+ A2·16
+ A1) / 16 =
(A3·16
+ A2), rem
= A1.
(A3·16
+ A2) / 16 =
A3 rem
= A2.
A3 / 16 =
0, rem
= A3.
Non-terminating Fractions
We
now make a detour to note a surprising fact about binary numbers – that some
fractions
that terminate in decimal are non-terminating in binary. We first consider terminating and
non-terminating fractions in decimal.
All of us know that 1/4 = 0.25, which is a terminating
fraction, but that 1/3 = 0.333333333333333333333333333333…, a non-terminating
fraction.
We
offer a demonstration of why 1/4 terminates in decimal notation and 1/3 does
not, and
then we show two proofs that 1/3 cannot be a terminating fraction in either
binary or decimal.
Consider
the following sequence of multiplications
Ľ · 10 = 2˝
˝
·
10 = 5. Thus 1/4 = 25/100 = 0.25.
Put another way, Ľ = (1/10) · (2 + ˝) = (1/10) · (2 + (1/10) · 5).
However,
1/3 ·
10 = 10/3 = 3 + 1/3, so repeated multiplication by 10 continues to yield a
fraction of 1/3 in the product; hence, the decimal representation of 1/3 is
non-terminating.
Explicitly, we see that 1/3 = (1/10) · (3 + 1/3) = (1/10) · (3 + (1/10) · (3 + 1/3)), etc.
In
decimal numbering, a fraction is terminating if and only if it can be
represented in the
form J / 10K for some integers J and K. We have seen that 1/4 = 25/100 = 25/102,
thus the
fraction 1/4 is a terminating fraction because we have shown the integers J =
25 and K = 2.
Here
are two proofs that the fraction 1/3 cannot be represented as a terminating
fraction in
decimal notation. The first proof relies
on the fact that every positive power of 10 can be
written as 9·M
+ 1 for some integer M. The second
relies on the fact that 10 = 2·5, so that
10K = 2K·5K. To
motivate the first proof, note that 100 = 1 = 9·0 + 1,
10 = 9·1
+ 1,
100
= 9·11
+ 1, 1000 = 9·111
+ 1, etc. If 1/3 were a terminating
decimal, we could solve
the following equations for integers J and M.
, which becomes 3·J = 9·M + 1 or 3·(J – 3·M) = 1. But there
is no
integer X such that 3·X = 1 and the equation has no integer solutions.
The
other proof also involves solving an equation.
If 1/3 were a non-terminating fraction,
then we could solve the following equation for J and K.
, which becomes 3·J = 2K·5K. This has an integer solution J only if the
right hand side of the equation can be factored by 3. But neither 2K nor 5K
can be factored by
3, so the right hand side cannot be factored by 3 and hence the equation is not
solvable.
From
this, it immediately follows that the fraction 1/3, as a decimal number, does
not
terminate. The fact that the base–3
representation (0.13), base–6 representation (0.23), and
base–9 representation (0.39) do terminate is only of marginal
academic interest.
NOTE: This
discussion of an obscure point in numeric representation might seem to be
pointless, but it has
direct bearing on the precision with which real numbers may
be stored and processed
in a computer.
Now consider the
innocent looking decimal 0.20. We show
that this does not have a
terminating form in binary. We first
demonstrate this by trying to apply the
multiplication method to obtain the binary representation.
Number Product Binary
0.20 · 2 = 0.40 0
0.40 · 2 = 0.80 0
0.80
· 2 = 1.60 1
0.60 · 2 = 1.20 1
0.20 · 2 = 0.40 0
0.40 · 2 = 0.80 0
0.80 · 2 = 1.60 1 but we have seen this – see four lines above.
So decimal 0.20 in binary
is 0.00110011001100110011 …, ad infinitum.
This might
be written conventionally as 0.00110 0110 0110 0110 0110, to emphasize the
pattern.
The proof that no
terminating representation exists depends on the fact that any terminating
fraction in binary can be represented in the form 
for some integers J
and K. Thus we
solve 
or 5·J = 2K. This equation has a solution only if the
right hand side is divisible
by 5. But 2 and 5 are relatively prime
numbers, so 5 does not divide any power of 2 and the
equation has no integer solution. Hence
0.20 in decimal has no terminating form in binary.
Binary
Addition
The
next topic is storage of integers in a computer. We shall be concerned with storage of
both positive and negative integers.
Two’s complement arithmetic is the most common
method of storing signed integers.
Calculation of the two’s complement of a number
involves binary addition. For that
reason, we first discuss binary addition.
To
motivate our discussion of binary addition, let us first look at decimal
addition. Consider
the sum 15 + 17 = 32. First, note that 5
+ 7 = 12. In order to speak of binary
addition, we
must revert to a more basic way to describe 5 + 7; we say that the sum is 2
with a carry-out of
1. Consider the sum 1 + 1, which is
known to be 2. However, the correct
answer to our
simple problem is 32, not 22, because in computing the sum 1 + 1 we must
consider the
carry-in digit, here a 1. With that in
mind, we show two addition tables – for a half-adder
and a full-adder. The half-adder table
is simpler as it does not involve a carry-in.
The
following table considers the sum and carry from A + B.
Half-Adder A + B
A B Sum Carry
0 0 0 0 Note the last row where we claim that 1 + 1 yields a
0 1 1 0 sum of zero and a carry of 1. This is similar to the
1 0 1 0 statement in decimal arithmetic that 5 + 5 yields a
1 1 0 1 sum of 0 and carry of 1 when 5 + 5 = 10.
Remember that
when the sum of two numbers equals or exceeds the value of the base of the
numbering system (here 2) that we decrease the sum by the value of the base and
generate a
carry. Here the base of the number
system is 2 (decimal), which is 1 + 1, and the sum is 0.
Say “One plus one equals two plus zero: 1 + 1 = 10”.
For us the half-adder
is only a step in the understanding of a full-adder, which implements
binary addition when a carry-in is allowed.
We now view the table for the sum A + B, with
a carry-in denoted by C. One can
consider this A + B + C, if that helps.
Full-Adder: A + B with Carry
A B C Sum Carry
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 1 0
0 1 0 1 0
0 1 1 0 1
1 0 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1
1 1 0 0 1
1 1 1 1 1
In the next chapter, we
shall investigate the construction of a full adder from digital
gates used to implement Boolean logic.
Just to anticipate the answer, we note that the
sum and carry table above is in the form of a Boolean truth table, which can be
immediately converted to a Boolean expression that can be implemented in
digital logic.
As an example, we
shall consider a number of examples of addition of four-bit binary
numbers. The problem will first be
stated in decimal, then converted to binary, and then
done. The last problem is introduced for
the express purpose of pointing out an error.
We shall see in a
minute that four-bit binary numbers can represent decimal numbers in
the range 0 to 15 inclusive. Here are
the problems, first in decimal and then in binary.
1) 6 + 1 0110 + 0001
2) 11 + 1 1011 + 0001
3) 13 + 5 1101 + 0101
0110 1011 1101 In the first sum, we add 1 to an even number. This
0001 0001 0101 is quite easy to do. Just change the last 0 to a 1.
0111 1100 0010 Otherwise, we may need to watch the carry bits.
In the second sum, let us
proceed from right to left. 1 + 1 = 0
with carry = 1. The second
column has 1 + 0 with carry-in of 1 = 0 with carry-out = 1. The third column has 0 + 0
with a carry-in of 1 = 1 with carry-out = 0.
The fourth column is 1 + 0 = 1.
Analysis of the third sum shows
that it is correct bit-wise but seems to be indicating that
13 + 5 = 2. This is an example of
“busted arithmetic”, more properly called overflow.
A given number of bits can represent integers only in a given range; here 13 +
5 is outside
the range 0 to 15 inclusive that is proper for four-bit unsigned numbers.
Signed and Unsigned Integers
Up to this point, we have
discussed only unsigned integers and the conversion of such from
one base to another. We now consider
signed integers and find that consideration of the
magnitude of such numbers as unsigned integers is an important part of the
process.
Integers are stored in a number
of formats. The most common formats
today include 16 and
32 bits, though long integers (64–bits) are becoming a standard integer format.
Although 32-bit integers are probably the most common, our examples focus on
eight–bit
integers because they are easy to illustrate.
In these discussions, the student should recall the
powers of 2: 20 = 1, 21 = 2, 22 = 4, 23
= 8, 24 = 16, 25 = 32, 26 = 64, 27
= 128, and 28 = 256.
Bits in the storage of an
integer are numbered right to left, with bit 0 being the right-most or
least-significant. In eight bit
integers, the bits from left to right are numbered 7 to 0. In 32
bit integers, the bits from left to right are numbered 31 to 0. Note that this is not the notation
used by IBM for its mainframe and enterprise computers. In the IBM notation,
the most
significant bit (often the sign bit) is bit 0 and the least significant bit has
the highest number;
bit 7 for an 8–bit integer. Here are the
bit numberings for a signed 8–bit integer.
Common Notation (8–bit entry) IBM Mainframe Notation
|
Bit # |
7 |
6 |
5 – 1 |
0 |
|
Bit # |
0 |
1 |
2 – 6 |
7 |
|
|
Sign |
MSB |
|
LSB |
|
Sign |
MSB |
|
LSB |
The simplest topic to cover is the storage of unsigned integers. As there are 2N possible
combinations of N binary bits, there are 2N unsigned integers
ranging from 0 to 2N – 1. For
eight-bit unsigned integers, this range is 0 though 255, as 28 =
256. Conversion from binary
to decimal is easy and follows the discussion earlier in this chapter.
Of the various
methods for storing signed integers,
we shall discuss only three
Two’s complement
One’s complement (but only as a way
to compute the two’s complement)
Excess 127 (for 8–bit numbers only)
as a way to understand the floating point standard.
One’s complement arithmetic is mostly obsolete and interests
us only as a stepping-stone to
two’s complement arithmetic. To compute
the one’s complement of a number:
1)
Represent the number as an N-bit binary number
2) Convert every 0 to a 1 and
every 1 to a 0.
Decimal 100 = 0110 0100
One’s complement 1001 1011; decimal –100 = 1001 1011 binary.
But consider the value 0 and problems representing it in
one’s–complement notation.
Decimal 0 = 0000
0000
One’s complement 1111 1111; decimal –0 = 1111 1111 binary.
There are a number of problems in one’s complement
arithmetic, the most noticeable being
illustrated by the fact that the one’s complement of 0 is 1111 1111. In this system, we have
–0 ą
0, which is a violation of some of the basic principles of mathematics. When coding
for a computer that used one’s–complement arithmetic, one had to write code
such as:
if ( (x == 0) || (x == –0) ) …
Notation:
In discussing the one’s
complement notation, we shall borrow some notation from digital
logic. This notation will be fully
discussed in a later chapter, but is quite easy to grasp.
We introduce the idea of logical
NOT, as applied to binary values 0 and 1.
Simply put
NOT(0) = 1
NOT(1) = 0.
The logical NOT function is
denoted in three distinct ways, but here we focus on only one:
the over–bar notation. Thus = 1 and = 0.
Let X represent an integer
value. Note that the recipe for taking
the one’s–complement of a
number involves taking the logical NOT of each of its binary bits. For this reason, I propose
to denote the one’s–complement of an integer X by , using the NOT symbol.
Let X = 100. Represented in binary, X = 0110
0100
The one’s complement
is = 1001 1011
Note that for addition X + = 1111 1111. We shall say more on this later.
The Two’s Complement
For integer arithmetic, all modern computers use two’s–complement
notation. In this text,
we shall reserve the standard symbol “–X” to denote the negative in the
two’s–complement
system. The two’s complement of a number
is obtained as follows:
1) First take the one’s complement of the number
2) Add 1 to the one’s complement and discard the carry out of the left-most column.
Decimal 100 = 0110 0100
One’s complement 1001 1011
We now do the addition 1001 1011
1
1001
1100
Thus, in eight-bit two’s complement arithmetic
Decimal 100 = 0110 0100 binary
Decimal – 100 = 1001 1100 binary
This illustrates one pleasing
feature of two’s complement arithmetic: for both positive and
negative integers the last bit is zero if and only if the number is even. Note that it is essential
to state how many bits are to be used.
Consider the 8-bit two’s complement of 100. Now
100 = 64 + 32 + 4, so decimal 100 = 0110 0100 binary, and we get the result
above.
Consider decimal 12 = 0000 1100
binary. If we took the two’s complement
of 1100, we
might get 0100, giving us no idea how to pad out the high–order four bits.
The real reason for the
popularity of two’s complement can be seen by calculating the
representation of – 0. To do this we
take the two’s complement of 0.
In eight bits, 0 is represented as 0000 0000
Its one’s complement is represented as 1111 1111.
We now take the two’s complement of 0.
Here is the addition 1111
1111
1
1
0000 0000 – but
discard the leading 1.
Thus the two’s complement of 0
is represented as 0000 0000. As required by algebra,
this is exactly the same as the representation of 0 and we avoid the messy
problem – 0 ą
0.
In 8– bit two’s complement
arithmetic, + 127 0111 1111
the range of integers that can be +
10 0000 1010
represented is – 2N-1 through 2N-1 – 1 +1 0000 0001
inclusive, thus the range for eight-bit 0 0000 0000
two’s complement integers is –128 –
1 1111 1111 The number is
through 127 inclusive, as 27 = 128.
The – 10 1111 0110 negative if and
table at the right shows a number of –
127 1000 0001 only if the left–
binary representations for this example. –
128 1000 0000 most bit is 1.
We now
give the ranges allowed for the most common two’s complement representations.
Eight bit – 128 to +127
16-bit – 32,768 to
+32,767
32-bit – 2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647
The range for 64-bit two’s
complement integers is – 263 to 263 – 1. As an exercise in math,
I propose to do a rough calculation of 263. This will be done using only logarithms.
There is a small collection of
numbers that the serious student of computer science should
memorize. Two of these numbers are the
base-10 logarithms of 2 and 3. To five
decimal
places, log 2 = 0.30103 and log 3 = 0.47712.
Now 263 = (100.30103)63 =
1018.9649 = 100.9649 · 1018. What do we make of 100.9649? Since we
have log 3 = 0.47712 and 9 = 32, we have log 9 = 2 · log
3 = 2 ·
0.47712 = 0.95424. This
leads to the conclusion that 100.9649 > 100.95424 » 9;
hence 9. < 100.95424 < 10.0.
We conclude
that a 64–bit integer allows the representation of 18 digit numbers and most 19
digit values.
The precise range is –9,223,372,036,854,775,808 through 9,223,372,036,854,775,807.
Reminder: For any
number of bits, in two’s complement arithmetic the number is negative if
and only if the high-order bit in the binary representation is a 1.
Sign Extension
This applies to numbers represented in one’s-complement and
two’s-complement form. The
issue arises when we store a number in a form with more bits; for example when
we store a
16-bit integer in a 32-bit register. The
question is how to set the high-order bits.
Consider a 16-bit integer stored in two’s-complement
form. Bit 15 is the sign bit. We can
consider bit representation of the number as A15A14A13A12A11A10A9A8A7A6A5A4A3A2A1A0.
Consider placing this number into a 32-bit register with bits numbered R31
through R0, with
R31 being the sign bit. Part
of the solution is obvious: make Rk = Ak for 0 Ł k Ł
15. What is
not obvious is how to set bits 31 through 16 in R as the 16-bit integer A has
no such bits.
For non-negative numbers the solution is obvious and simple,
set the extra bits to 0. This is
like writing the number two hundred (200) as a five digit integer; write it
00200. But
consider the 16-bit binary number 1111 1111 1000 0101, decimal
–123.
If we expanded this to 0000 0000 0000 0000 1111 1111 1000 0101
by setting
the high order bits to 0’s, we would have a positive number, 65413. This is not correct.
The answer to the problem is sign extension, which means
filling the higher order bits of the
bigger representation with the sign bit from the more restricted
representation. In our
example, we set bits 31 through 16 of the register to the sign bit of the
16-bit integer.
The correct answer is then 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1000 0101.
Note – the way I got the value 1111 1111 1000 0101 for the 16-bit
representation of – 123
was to compute the 8-bit representation, which is 1000 0101. The sign bit in this
representation is 1, so I extended the number to 16-bits by setting the high
order bits to 1.
Nomenclature: “Two’s-Complement Representation” vs.
“Taking the Two’s-Complement”
We now address an issue that seems to cause confusion to
some students. There is a
difference between the idea of a complement system and the process of taking
the
complement. Because we are interested
only in the two’s-complement system, I restrict my
discussion to that system.
Question: What is
the representation of the positive number 123 in 8-bit two’s complement
arithmetic?
Answer: 0111 1011. Note that I did not take the two’s complement of anything to get this.
Two’s-complement arithmetic is a system of representing
integers in which the two’s-
complement is used to compute the negative of an integer. For positive integers, the method
of conversion to binary differs from unsigned integers only in the
representable range.
For N-bit unsigned integers, the range of integers
representable is 0 ... 2N – 1, inclusive. For
N-bit two’s-complement integers the range of non-negative integers
representable is
0 ... 2N-1 – 1, inclusive. The rules for converting decimal to binary
integers are the same for
non-negative integers – one only has to watch the range restrictions.
The only time when one must use the fact that the number
system is two’s-complement
(that is – take the two’s-complement) is when one is asked about a negative
number. Strictly
speaking, it is not necessary to take the two’s-complement of anything in order
to represent a
negative number in binary, it is only that most students find this the easiest
way.
Question: What is the representation of –123 in 8-bit two’s-complement arithmetic?
Answer: Perhaps I
know that the answer is 1000 0101. As a
matter of fact, I can calculate
this result directly without taking the two’s-complement of anything, but most
students find
the mechanical way the easiest way to the solution. Thus, the preferred solution for most
students is
1) We note that 0 Ł 123 Ł 27
– 1, so both the number and its negative
can be represented
as an 8-bit two’s-complement integer.
2) We note that the representation of +123 in 8-bit binary is 0111 1011
3) We take the two’s-complement of this
binary result to get the binary
representation of
–123 as 1000
0101.
We note in passing a decidedly
weird way to calculate the representations of non-negative
integers in two’s-complement form.
Suppose we want the two’s-complement representation
of +123 as an eight-bit binary number.
We could start with the fact that the representation
of –123 in 8-bit two’s-complement is 1000 0101 and take the two’s complement of
1000 0101
to obtain the binary representation of 123 = –(–123). This is perfectly valid, but decidedly
strange.
One could work this way, but why bother?
Summary: Speaking of the
two’s-complement does not mean that one must take the
two’s-complement
of anything.
Why Does the Two’s Complement Work?
We now ask an obvious
question. The process of taking the
two’s–complement of the binary
representation of an integer has been described and is well defined. But why does this
process yield the negative of the
integer. We begin with a fact noted in
passing just above
Question: Name the only number with the property that if I add 1 to it, I get 0.
Answer: That unique number is negative 1, denoted as –1.
Look now at simple addition for each of 8–bit and 16–bit signed integer values.
In 8–bit 1111
1111
+
1
0000 0000 Remember that the carry–out from the left
bit is discarded.
In
16–bit 1111 1111 1111 1111
+
1
0000 0000 0000 0000 Again, the sum is 0.
From these two examples, it is
possible to generalize to a statement that in any system in
which the number 0 is represented as all bits being 0, a number with all bits 1
is –1.
We now consider the bitwise addition of a binary bit and its
one’s–complement, also
called NOT(a) or 
. Thus we compute the sum a + for the two possible values of a.
At the bit level, the addition table is simple, as the sum is always 1, without
a carry.
a a
+
0 1 1
1 0 1
We now consider the sum of an
arbitrary N–bit binary number and its one’s complement,
recalling that taking the one’s complement is a bit–by–bit operation.
Let A be the N–bit binary number
represented as an–1an–2
… a2a1a0.
Let be the 1’s–complement of A,
represented as 
.
Positional Notation
We now review the idea of positional notation for binary representations of
integers,
beginning with N–bit unsigned integers.
While the discussions are valid for all N > 0,
we shall choose to illustrate with N = 8.
But we have shown that for every bit index that 
Thus, we have A +
= –1. This should be clarified by a few
examples. Note that in each
example we add either 0 + 1 or 1 + 0, so there are no carry bits to consider.
Consider the
8–bit representation of the decimal number 100.
Let A = 0110 0100
then = 1001 1011
A + =
1111
1111, which represents –1.
Consider the 8–bit representation of the negative decimal number –123.
Let A = 1000
0101
then = 0111 1010
A + =
1111
1111, which represents –1.
If we have A +
= –1 for any binary value A, then we have A
+ ( + 1) = 0.
Hence ( + 1) = –A, the negative of the value A. This is why two’s complement works.
Here is a table showing how to count up from the most negative integer.
|
Decimal |
Positive |
One’s Complement |
Two’s Complement |
Comment |
|
8 |
|
|
1000 |
–8 |
|
7 |
0111 |
1000 |
1001 |
–8 + 1 |
|
6 |
0110 |
1001 |
1010 |
–8 + 2 |
|
5 |
0101 |
1010 |
1011 |
–8 + 3 |
|
4 |
0100 |
1011 |
1100 |
–8 + 4 |
|
3 |
0011 |
1100 |
1101 |
–8 + 5 |
|
2 |
0010 |
1101 |
1110 |
–8 + 6 |
|
1 |
0001 |
1110 |
1111 |
–8 + 7 |
The above presents an interesting argument and proof, but it
overlooks one essential point.
How does the hardware handle this? For
any sort of adder, the bits are just that.
There is
nothing special about the high–order bit.
It is just another bit, and not interpreted in any
special way. To the physical adder, the
high–order is just another bit.
We shall discuss this problem when we present the logical design of a binary adder.
Arithmetic Overflow – “Busting the Arithmetic”
We continue our examination of computer arithmetic to
consider one more topic – overflow.
Arithmetic overflow occurs under a
number of cases:
1) when two positive numbers are added and
the result is negative
2) when two negative numbers are added and the result is
positive
3) when a shift operation changes the sign bit of the result.
In mathematics, the sum of two negative numbers is always
negative and the sum of two
positive numbers is always positive. The
overflow problem is an artifact of the limits on
the range of integers and real numbers as stored in computers. We shall consider only
overflows arising from integer addition.
For two’s-complement arithmetic, the range of storable integers is as follows:
16-bit – 215 to 215 – 1 or – 32768 to 32767
32-bit – 231 to 231 – 1 or – 2147483648 to 2147483647
In two’s-complement arithmetic, the most significant (left-most) bit is the sign bit
Overflow in addition occurs when two numbers, each with a
sign bit of 0, are added and the
sum has a sign bit of 1 or when two numbers, each with a sign bit of 1, are
added and the sum
has a sign bit of 0. For simplicity, we
consider 16-bit addition. As an example,
consider the
sum 24576 + 24576 in both decimal and binary.
Note 24576 = 16384 + 8192 = 214 + 213.
24576 0110 0000 0000 0000
24576 0110 0000 0000 0000
– 16384 1100 0000 0000 0000
In fact, 24576 + 24576 = 49152 = 32768 + 16384. The overflow is due to the fact that
49152 is too large to be represented as a 16-bit signed integer.
As another example, consider the
sum (–32768) + (–32768). As a 16–bit
signed integer,
the sum is 0!
–32768 1000 0000 0000 0000
–32768 1000 0000 0000 0000
0 0000 0000 0000 0000
It is easily shown that addition of a validly positive
integer to a valid negative integer cannot
result in an overflow. For example,
consider again 16–bit two’s–complement integer
arithmetic with two integers M and N. We
have 0 Ł
M Ł
32767 and –32768 Ł
N Ł
0. If
|M| ł
|N|, we have 0 Ł
(M + N) Ł
32767 and the sum is valid. Otherwise,
we have
–32768 Ł
(M + N) Ł
0, which again is valid.
Integer overflow can also occur with subtraction. In this case, the two values (minuend
and subtrahend) must have opposite signs
if overflow is to be possible.
Excess–127
We now cover excess–127
representation. This is mentioned only
because it is required
when discussing the IEEE floating point standard. In general, we can consider an
excess–M notation for any positive integer M.
For an N–bit excess–M representation, the
rules for conversion from binary to decimal are:
1) Evaluate as an unsigned binary number
2) Subtract M.
To convert from decimal to binary, the rules are
1) Add M
2) Evaluate as an unsigned binary number.
In considering excess notation, we focus on eight–bit excess–127
notation. The range of
values that can be stored is based on the range that can be stored in the plain
eight–bit
unsigned standard: 0 through 255.
Remember that in excess–127 notation, to store an integer
N we first form the number N + 127. The
limits on the unsigned eight-bit storage require
that 0 Ł
(N + 127) Ł
255, or – 127 Ł
N Ł
128.
As an exercise, we note the eight-bit excess-127 representation of – 5, – 1, 0 and 4.
– 5 + 127 = 122. Decimal 122 = 0111 1010 binary, the answer.
– 1 + 127 = 126. Decimal 126 = 0111 1110 binary, the answer.
0 + 127 = 127. Decimal 127 = 0111 1111 binary, the answer.
4 + 127 = 131 Decimal 131 = 1000 0011 binary, the answer.
We have now completed the discussion of common ways to
represent unsigned and signed
integers in a binary computer. We now
start our progress towards understanding the storage
of real numbers in a computer. There are
two ways to store real numbers – fixed point and
floating point. We focus this discussion
on floating point, specifically the IEEE standard for
storing floating point numbers in a computer.
Normalized Numbers
The last topic to be discussed prior to defining the IEEE
standard for floating point numbers
is that of normalized numbers. We must
also mention the concept of denormalized numbers,
though we shall spend much less time on the latter.
A normalized number is one with a representation of the form
X ·
2P, where 1.0 Ł X < 2.0.
At the moment, we use the term denormalized number to mean a number that cannot
be so
represented, although the term has a different precise meaning in the IEEE
standard. First,
we ask a question: “What common number
cannot be represented in this form?”
The answer is zero. There is no power of 2 such that 0.0 = X · 2P,
where 1.0 Ł
X < 2.0. We
shall return to this issue when we discuss the IEEE standard, at which time we
shall give a
more precise definition of the denormalized numbers, and note that they include
0.0. For the
moment, we focus on obtaining the normalized representation of positive real
numbers.
We start with some simple examples.
1.0 = 1.0 · 20, thus X = 1.0 and P = 0.
1.5 = 1.5 · 20, thus X = 1.5 and P = 0.
2.0 = 1.0 · 21, thus X = 1.0 and P = 1
0.25 = 1.0 · 2-2, thus X = 1.0 and P = -2
7.0 = 1.75 · 22, thus X = 1.75 and P = 2
0.75 = 1.5 · 2-1, thus X = 1.5 and P = -1.
To better understand this conversion, we shall do a few more
examples using the more
mechanical approach to conversion of decimal numbers to binary. We start with an example:
9.375 ·
10-2 = 0.09375. We now
convert to binary.
0.09375 · 2 = 0.1875 0
0.1875 · 2 = 0.375 0 Thus
decimal 0.09375 = 0.00011 binary
0.375 · 2 = 0.75 0 or
1.1 ·
2-4 in the normalized notation.
0.75 · 2 = 1.5 1
0.5 · 2 = 1.0 1
Please note that these representations take the form X · 2P,
where X is represented as a
binary number but P is represented as a decimal number. Later, P will be converted to an
excess–127 binary representation, but for the present it is easier to keep it
in decimal.
We now convert the decimal number 80.09375 to binary
notation. I have chosen 0.09375 as
the fractional part out of laziness as we have already obtained its binary
representation. We
now convert the number 80 from decimal to binary. Note 80 = 64 + 16 = 26 · (1 +
Ľ).
80 / 2 = 40 remainder 0
40/2 = 20 remainder 0
20 / 2 = 10 remainder 0
10 / 2 = 5 remainder 0
5 / 2 = 2 remainder 1
2 / 2 = 1 remainder 0
1 / 2 = 1 remainder 1
Thus decimal 80 = 1010000 binary and decimal 80.09375 =
1010000.00011 binary. To get
the binary point to be after the first 1, we move it six places to the left, so
the normalized
form of the number is 1.01000000011 · 26, as expected. For convenience, we write this as
1.0100 0000 0110 ·
26.
Extended Example: Avogadro’s Number.
Up to this point, we have discussed the normalized
representation of positive real numbers
where the conversion from decimal to binary can be done exactly for both the integer
and
fractional parts. We now consider
conversion of very large real numbers in which it is not
practical to represent the integer part, much less convert it to binary.
We now discuss a rather large floating point number: 6.023 · 1023. This is Avogadro’s
number. We shall convert this to
normalized form and use the opportunity to discuss a
number of issues associated with floating point numbers in general.
Avogadro’s number arises in the study of chemistry. This number relates the atomic weight
of an element to the number of atoms in that many grams of the element. The atomic weight
of oxygen is 16.00, as a result of which there are about 6.023 · 1023
atoms in 16 grams of
oxygen. For our discussion we use a more
accurate value of 6.022142 · 1023 obtained from
the web sit of the National Institute of Standards (www.nist.gov).
We first remark that the number is determined by experiment,
so it is not known exactly. We
thus see one of the main scientific uses of this notation – to indicate the
precision with which
the number is known. The above should be
read as (6.022142 ±
0.0000005) ·
1023, that is to
say that the best estimate of the value is between 6.0221415 · 1023
and 6.0221425 ·
1023, or
between 602, 214, 150, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 and 602, 214, 250, 000, 000,
000, 000, 000.
Here we see another use of scientific notation – not having to write all these
zeroes.
Again, we use logarithms and anti-logarithms to convert this
number to a power of two. The
first question is how accurately to state the logarithm. The answer comes by observing that
the number we are converting is known to seven digit’s precision. Thus, the most accuracy
that makes sense in the logarithm is also seven digits.
In base-10 logarithms log(6.022142 · 1023) = 23.0 +
log(6.022142). To seven digits, this
last
number is 0.7797510, so log(6.022142 · 1023) =
23.7797510.
We now use the fact that log(2.0) = 0.3010300 to seven
decimal places to solve the equation
2X = (100.3010300)X
= 10.23.7797520 or 0.30103·X = 23.7797510 for X =
78.9946218.
If we use NA to denote Avogadro’s number, the
first thing we have discovered from this
tedious analysis is that 278 < NA < 279,
and that NA » 279.
The representation of the number in
normal form is thus of the form 1.f · 278, where the next step is to determine
f. To do this,
we obtain the decimal representation of 278.
Note that 278 = (100.30103)78
= 1023.48034 = 100.48034 · 1023 =
3.022317 ·
1023.
But 6.022142 / 3.022317 = 1.992558, so NA = 1.992558 · 278,
and f = 0.992558.
To complete this problem, we obtain the binary equivalent of 0.992558.
0.992558 · 2 = 1.985116 1
0.985116 ·
2 = 1.970232 1
0.970232 ·
2 = 1.949464 1
0.949464 ·
2 = 1.880928 1
0.880928 ·
2 = 1.761856 1
0.761856 ·
2 = 1.523712 1
0.523712 ·
2 = 1.047424 1
0.047424 · 2 = 0.094848 0
0.094848 ·
2 = 0.189696 0
0.189696 ·
2 = 0.379392 0
0.379392 ·
2 = 0.758784 0
0.758784 · 2 = 1.517568 1
The desired form is 1.1111 1110 0001 · 278.
IEEE Standard 754 Floating Point Numbers
There are two primary formats in the IEEE 754 standard; single
precision and double
precision. We shall study the
single precision format.
The single precision format is a 32–bit format. From left to right, we have
1 sign bit; 1 for negative and
0 for non-negative
8 exponent bits
23 bits for the fractional
part of the mantissa.
The eight-bit exponent field stores the exponent of 2 in
excess-127 form, with the
exception of two special bit patterns.
0000 0000 numbers with these exponents are
denormalized
1111 1111 numbers with these exponents are infinity
or Not A Number
Before presenting examples of
the IEEE 754 standard, we shall examine the concept of NaN
or Not a Number. In this discussion, we
use some very imprecise terminology.
Consider the quotient 1/0. The equation 1 / 0 = X is equivalent to
solving for a number X
such that 0 ·
X = 1. There is no such number X such
that the result of multiplying it by 0 yields a 1.
Loosely speaking, we say 1 / 0 = Ą; precisely speaking we use the notations of
the calculus and speak of limits to the fraction 1 / Y as the number Y
approaches 0.
Now consider the quotient
0/0. Again we are asking for the number
X such that 0 ·
X = 0.
The difference here is that this equation is true for every number X. In terms of the IEEE
standard, 0 / 0 is Not a Number, or NaN.
The number NaN can also be used for arithmetic operations
that have no solutions, such as
taking the square root of –1 while limited to the real number system. While this result
cannot be represented, it is definitely neither +Ą nor –Ą .
We now illustrate the standard by doing some conversions.
For the first example, consider the number –0.75.
To represent the number in the IEEE standard, first note
that it is negative so that the sign bit
is 1. Having noted this, we convert the
number 0.75.
0.75 · 2 = 1.5 1
0.5 · 2 = 1.0 1
Thus, the binary equivalent of decimal 0.75 is 0.11
binary. We must now convert this into
the normalized form 1.10 · 2–1.
Thus we have the key elements required.
The power of 2 is –1, stored in Excess-127 as 126 = 0111 1110 binary.
The fractional part is 10, possibly best written as 10000
Recalling that the sign bit is 1, we form the number as follows:
1
0111 1110 10000
We now group the binary bits by fours from the left until we get only 0’s.
1011
1111 0100 0000
Since trailing zeroes are not significant in fractions, this is equivalent to
1011
1111 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
or BF40 0000 in hexadecimal.
As another example, we revisit a number converted earlier. We have shown that
80.09375 = 1.0100 0000 0110 · 26. This is a positive number, so the sign bit is
0. As an
Excess–127 number, 6 is stored as 6 + 127 = 133 = 1000 0101 binary. The fractional part
of the number is 0100 0000 0110 0000, so the IEEE representation is
0
1000 0101 0100 0000 0110 0000
Regrouping by fours from the left, we get the following
0100
0010 1010 0000 0011 0000
In hexadecimal this number is 42A030,
or 42A0
3000 as an eight digit hexadecimal
number. Note that all single–precision
values should be represented with 8 hex digits.
Here is the general rule for floating–point numbers:
single precision 32 bit values represent with 8 hexadecimal digits
double precision 64 bit values represent with 16 hex digits.
Some Examples “In Reverse”
We now consider another view on the IEEE floating point
standard – the “reverse” view.
We are given a 32-bit number, preferably in hexadecimal form, and asked to
produce the
floating-point number that this hexadecimal string represents. As always, in interpreting any
string of binary characters, we must be told what standard to apply – here the
IEEE-754 single precision standard.
First, convert the following 32-bit word, represented by
eight hexadecimal digits, to the
floating-point number being represented.
0000 0000 // Eight hexadecimal zeroes representing 32 binary zeroes
The answer is 0.0. This is a result that should be memorized.
The question in the following paragraph was taken from a
mid–term exam for an
introductory course in computer organization.
The paragraphs following were taken
from the answer key for that exam.
Give the value of the
real number (in standard decimal representation) represented by
the following 32-bit words stored as an IEEE standard single precision.
a) 4068 0000
b) 42E8 0000
c) C2E8 0000
d) C380 0000
e) C5FC
0000
The first step in solving these problems is to convert the hexadecimal to binary.
a) 4068 0000 = 0100 0000 0110 1000 0000 0000
0000 0000
Regroup to get 0 1000 0000 1101 0000 etc. (trailing zeroes
can be ignored)
Thus s = 0 (not a negative number)
p + 127 = 100000002
= 12810, so p = 1
and m = 1101, so 1.m =
1.1101 and the number is 1.1101·21 = 11.1012.
But 11.1012 = 2 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/8 = 3 + 5/8 = 3.625.
b) 42E8 0000 = 0100 0010 1110 1000 0000 0000
0000 0000
Regroup to get 0 1000 0101 1101 0000 etc
Thus s = 0 (not a negative number)
p + 127 = 100001012
= 128 + 4 + 1 = 133, hence p = 6
and m = 1101, so 1.m =
1.1101 and the number is 1.1101·26 = 11101002
But 11101002 = 64 + 32 + 16 + 4 = 96 + 20 = 116 = 116.0
c) C2E80 0000 = 1100 0010 1110 1000 0000 0000
0000 0000
Regroup to get 1 1000 0101 1101 0000 etc.
Thus s = 1 (a negative number) and the
rest is the same as b). So – 116.0
d) C380 0000 = 1100 0011 1000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
Regroup to get 1 1000 0111 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 000
Thus s = 1 (a negative number)
p + 127 = 100001112
= 128 + 7 = 135; hence p = 8.
m = 0000, so 1.m = 1.0 and the
number is – 1.0 · 28 = –
256.0
e) C5FC 0000 = 1100 0101 1111 1100 0000 0000 0000 0000
Regroup to get 1 1000 1011 1111 1000 0000 0000 0000 000
Thus s = 1 (a negative number)
p + 127 = 1000 10112
= 128 + 8 + 2 + 1 = 139, so p = 12
m = 1111 1000, so 1.m = 1.1111
1000
There are three ways to get the
magnitude of this number. The magnitude
can be written
in normalized form as 1.1111 1000 · 212 = 1.1111 1000 · 4096, as 212 =
4096.
Method 1
If we solve this the way we
have, we have to place four extra zeroes after the decimal point
to get the required 12, so that we can shift the decimal point right 12 places.
1.1111 1000 · 212 =
1.1111 1000 0000 ·
212 = 1 1111 1000 00002
= 212
+ 211+ 210 + 29 + 28 + 27
= 4096
+ 2048 + 1024 + 512 + 256 + 128 = 8064.
Method 2
We shift the decimal place only
5 places to the right (reducing the exponent by 5) to get
1.1111 1000 · 212 = 1 1111 1.0 · 27
= (25
+ 24 + 23 + 22 + 21 + 20)
·
27
= (32
+ 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1) · 128 = 63 · 128 = 8064.
Method 3
This is an offbeat method, not much favored by students.
1.1111 1000 · 212 =
(1 + 2–1 + 2–2+ 2–3+ 2–4+ 2–5)
·
212
= 212
+ 211+ 210 + 29 + 28 + 27
= 4096
+ 2048 + 1024 + 512 + 256 + 128 = 8064.
Method 4
This is another offbeat method, not much favored by students.
1.1111 1000 · 212 =
(1 + 2–1 + 2–2+ 2–3+ 2–4+ 2–5)
·
212
= (1 +
0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 + 0.0625+ 0.03125) · 4096
=
1.96875 ·
4096 = 8064.
The answer is – 8064.0.
As a final example, we consider the IEEE standard
representation of Avogadro’s number.
We have seen that NA » 1.1111 1110 0001 · 278. This is a positive number; the sign bit is 0.
We now consider the representation of the exponent 78. Now 78 + 127 = 205, so the
Excess-127 representation of 78 is 205 = 128 + 77 = 128 + 64 + 13 = 128 + 64 +
8 + 4 + 1.
As an 8-bit binary number this is 1100 1101.
We already have the fractional part, so we get
0
1100 1101 1111 1110 0001 0000
Grouped by fours from the left we get
0110
0110 1111 1111 0000 1000 0000 0000,
or 66FF
0800 in hexadecimal.
Range and Precision
We now consider the range and precision associated with the
IEEE single precision standard
using normalized numbers.. The range
refers to the smallest and largest positive numbers
that can be stored. Recalling that zero
is not a positive number, we derive the smallest and
largest representable numbers.
In the binary the smallest normalized number is 1.0 · 2–126
and the largest number is a bit
less than 2.0 ·
2127 = 2128.
Again, we use logarithms to evaluate these numbers.
– 126 · 0.30103 = – 37.93 = –
38.0 + 0.07, so 2–126 = 1.07 · 10 -38,
approximately.
128 · 0.30103 = 38.53, so 2128 = 3.5 · 10 38, as 100.53 is a bit bigger than 3.2.
We now consider the precision associated with the
standard. Consider the decimal notation
1.23. The precision associated with this
is ±
0.005 as the number really represents a value
between 1.225 and 1.235 respectively.
The IEEE standard has a 23-bit fraction. Thus, the precision associated with the
standard is
1 part in 224 or 1 part in 16 · 220 = 16 ·
1048576 = 16777216. This accuracy is
more precise
than 1 part in 107, or seven digit precision.
Denormalized Numbers
We shall see in a bit that the range of normalized numbers
is approximately 10 –38 to 10 38.
We now consider what we might do with a problem such as the quotient 10
–20 / 10 30. In
plain algebra, the answer is simply 10 –50, a very small positive
number. But this number is
smaller than allowed by the standard. We
have two options for representing the quotient,
either 0.0 or some strange number that clearly indicates the underflow. This is the purpose of
denormalized numbers – to show that the result of an operation is positive but
too small
to be represented in standard format.
Why Excess–127 Notation for the Exponent?
We have introduced two methods
to be used for storing signed integers – two’s-complement
notation and excess–127 notation. One
might well ask why two’s-complement notation is
used to store signed integers while the excess–127 method is used for exponents
in the
floating point notation.
The answer for integer notation
is simple. It is much easier to build an
adder for integers
stored in two’s-complement form than it is to build an adder for integers in
the excess
notation. In the next chapter we shall
investigate a two’s-complement adder.
So, why use excess–127 notation
for the exponent in the floating point representation? The
answer is best given by example.
Consider some of the numbers we have used as examples.
0011 1111 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 for 0.75
0100 0010 1010 0000 0011 0000 0000 0000 for 80.09375
0110 0110 1111 1111 0000 1000
0000 0000 for Avagadro’s
number.
It turns out that the excess–127
notation allows the use of the integer compare unit to
compare floating point numbers. Consider
two floating point numbers X and Y.
Pretend that
they are integers and compare their bit patterns as integer bit patterns. It viewed as an
integer, X is less than Y, then the floating point number X is less than the
floating point Y.
Note that we are not converting the numbers to integer form, just looking at
the bit patterns
and pretending that they are integers.
Were the exponents stored in two’s–complement notation, we
would have
0111
1111 1100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
for 0.75
0000 0011 0010 0000 0011 0000 0000 0000 for 80.09375
Comparing these as if they were
integers makes the value 0.75 appear to be larger. Recall
that it is the leftmost bit that is the sign bit in any standard numeric
representation.
Pretending that each of these values is an integer makes both positive numbers.
Floating Point Equality: X == Y
Due to round off error, it is
sometimes not advisable to check directly for equality of floating
point numbers. A better method would be
to use an acceptable relative error. We
borrow the
notation e
from calculus to stand for a small number, and use the notation |Z| for the
absolute
value of the number Z.
Here are two valid alternatives to the problematic statement (X == Y).
1) Absolute difference |X – Y| Ł e
2) Relative difference |X – Y| Ł e·(|X| +|Y|)
Note that
this form of the second statement is preferable to computing the quotient
|X – Y| / (|X| +|Y|) which will be
Bottom Line: In your coding
with real numbers, decide what it means for two numbers to be
equal. How close is close enough? There are no general rules here, only
cautions. It is
interesting to note that one language (SPARK, a variant of the Ada programming
language)
does not allow floating point comparison statements such as X
== Y, but demands an
evaluation of the absolute value of the difference between X and Y.
The IBM Mainframe Floating–Point Formats
In this discussion, we shall
adopt the bit numbering scheme used in the IBM documentation,
with the leftmost (sign) bit being number 0.
The IBM Mainframe supports three formats;
those representations with more bits can be seen to afford more precision.
Single precision 32 bits numbered
0 through 31,
Double precision 64 bits numbered
0 through 63, and
Extended precision 128 bits numbered
0 through 127.
As in the
IEEE–754 standard, each floating point number in this standard is specified by
three fields: the sign bit, the exponent, and the fraction. Unlike the IEEE–754 standard, the
IBM standard allocates the same number of bits for the exponent of each of its
formats.
The bit numbers for each of the fields are shown below.
|
Format |
Sign bit |
Bits for exponent |
Bits for fraction |
|
Single precision |
0 |
1 – 7 |
8 – 31 |
|
Double precision |
0 |
1 – 7 |
8 – 63 |
|
Extended precision |
0 |
1 – 7 |
8 – 127 |
Note that each of the three formats uses eight
bits to represent the exponent, in what is called
the characteristic field, and the
sign bit. These two fields together will
be represented by
two hexadecimal digits in a one–byte field.
The size
of the fraction field does depend on the format.
Single precision 24 bits 6 hexadecimal digits,
Double precision 56 bits 14
hexadecimal digits, and
Extended precision 120 bits 30
hexadecimal digits.
The Characteristic Field
In IBM
terminology, the field used to store the representation of the exponent is
called the
“characteristic”. This is a 7–bit field, used to store the
exponent in excess–64 format; if
the exponent is E, then the value (E + 64) is stored as an unsigned 7–bit
number.
Recalling
that the range for integers stored in 7–bit unsigned format is 0 Ł N Ł 127,
we have
0 Ł
(E + 64) Ł
127, or –64 Ł
E Ł
63.
Range for the Standard
We now consider the range and
precision associated with the IBM floating point formats.
The reader should remember that the range is identical for all of the three
formats; only the
precision differs. The range is usually
specified as that for positive numbers, from a very
small positive number to a large positive number. There is an equivalent range for negative
numbers. Recall that 0 is not a positive
number, so that it is not included in either range.
Given that the base of the
exponent is 16, the range for these IBM formats is impressive. It
is from somewhat less than 16–64 to a bit less than 1663. Note that 1663 = (24)63
= 2252, and
16–64 = (24)–64 = 2–256 = 1.0 / (2256)
and recall that log10(2) = 0.30103.
Using this, we compute
the maximum number storable at about (100.30103)252 = 1075.86
»
9·1075. We may approximate
the smallest positive number at 1.0 / (36·1075) or about
3.0·10–77. In summary, the following
real numbers can be represented in this standard: X = 0.0 and 3.0·10–77
< X < 9·1075.
One would not expect numbers outside of this range to appear in any realistic calculation.
Precision for the Standard
Unlike the range, which depends
weakly on the format, the precision is very dependent on
the format used. More specifically, the
precision is a direct function of the number of bits
used for the fraction. If the fraction
uses F bits, the precision is 1 part in 2F.
We
can summarize the precision for each format as follows.
Single precision F = 24 1 part in 224.
Double precision F = 56 1 part in 256.
Extended precision F = 120 1 part in 2120.
The first power of 2 is easily
computed; we use logarithms to approximate the others.
224 =
16,777,216
256 » (100.30103)56
= 1016.85 » 9·1016.
2120 » (100.30103)120
= 1036.12 » 1.2·1036.
The argument for precision is
quite simple. Consider the single
precision format, which is
more precise than 1 part in 10,000,000 and less precise than 1 part in
100,000,000. In other
words it is better than 1 part in 107, but not as good as 1 in 108;
hence we say 7 digits.
Range and Precision
We now summarize the range and precision for the three IBM Mainframe formats.
|
Format |
|
Precision |
|
Single Precision |
3.0·10–77 < X < 9·1075 |
7 digits |
|
Double Precision |
3.0·10–77 < X < 9·1075 |
16 digits |
|
Extended Precision |
3.0·10–77 < X < 9·1075 |
36 digits |
Representation of Floating Point
Numbers
As with the case of integers, we
shall most commonly use hexadecimal notation to represent
the values of floating–point numbers stored in the memory. From this point, we shall focus
on the two more commonly used formats: Single Precision and Double Precision.
The single precision format uses
a 32–bit number, represented by 8 hexadecimal digits.
The double precision format uses a 64–bit number, represented by 16 hexadecimal
digits.
Due to the fact that the two
formats use the same field length for the characteristic,
conversion between the two is quite simple.
To convert a single precision value to a double
precision value, just add eight hexadecimal zeroes.
Consider the
positive number 128.0.
As a single precision number, the value is stored as 4280 0000.
As a double precision number, the value is stored as 4280 0000 0000 0000.
Conversions from double
precision to single precision format will involve some rounding.
For example, consider the representation of the positive decimal number 123.45. In a few
pages, we shall show that it is represented as follows.
As a double
precision number, the value is stored as 427B
7333 3333 3333.
As a single precision number, the value is stored as 427B 7333.
The Sign Bit and
Characteristic Field
We now discuss the first two hexadecimal digits in the representation of a
floating–point
number in these two IBM formats. In IBM
nomenclature, the bits are allocated as follows.
Bit 0 the sign bit
Bits 1 – 7 the seven–bit number storing the
characteristic.
|
Bit Number |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
Hex digit |
0 |
1 |
||||||
|
Use |
Sign bit |
Characteristic (Exponent + 64) |
||||||
Consider the four bits that comprise hexadecimal digit 0. The sign bit in the floating–point
representation is the “8 bit” in that hexadecimal digit. This leads to a simple rule.
If the number is not negative, bit 0 is 0, and hex digit 0 is one of 0, 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.
If the number is negative, bit 0 is
1, and hex digit 0 is one of 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, or F.
Some Single Precision
Examples
We now examine a number of examples, using the IBM single–precision
floating–point
format. The reader will note that the
methods for conversion from decimal to hexadecimal
formats are somewhat informal, and should check previous notes for a more
formal method.
Note that the first step in each conversion is to represent the magnitude of the number in the
required form X·16E,
after which we determine the sign and build the first two hex digits.
Example 1: Positive
exponent and positive fraction.
The decimal number is 128.50. The format demands a representation in the
form X·16E,
with 0.625 Ł
X < 1.0. As 128 Ł X
< 256, the number is converted to the form X·162.
Note that 128 = (1/2)·162 = (8/16)·162 , and 0.5 =
(1/512)·162
= (8/4096)·162.
Hence, the value is 128.50 = (8/16 + 0/256 + 8/4096)·162; it is 162·0x0.808.
The exponent value is 2, so the
characteristic value is either 66 or 0x42 = 100 0010.
The first two hexadecimal digits in the eight digit representation are formed
as follows.
|
Field |
Sign |
Characteristic |
||||||
|
Value |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Hex value |
4 |
2 |
||||||
The fractional part comprises six hexadecimal digits, the
first three of which are 808.
The number 128.50 is represented as 4280 8000.
Example 2: Positive
exponent and negative fraction.
The decimal number is the
negative number –128.50. At this point,
we would normally
convert the magnitude of the number to hexadecimal representation. This number has the
same magnitude as the previous example, so we just copy the answer; it is 162·0x0.808.
We now build the first two hexadecimal digits, noting that the sign bit is 1.
|
Field |
Sign |
Characteristic |
||||||
|
Value |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Hex value |
C |
2 |
||||||
The number 128.50 is represented as C280 8000.
Note that we could have obtained this value just by adding 8 to the first hex
digit.
Example 3: Negative
exponent and positive fraction.
The decimal number is
0.375. As a fraction, this is 3/8 =
6/16. Put another way, it is
160·0.375
= 160·(6/16). This is in the required format X·16E,
with 0.625 Ł
X < 1.0.
The exponent value is 0, so the
characteristic value is either 64 or 0x40 = 100 0000.
The first two hexadecimal digits in the eight digit representation are formed
as follows.
|
Field |
Sign |
Characteristic |
||||||
|
Value |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Hex value |
4 |
0 |
||||||
The fractional part comprises six hexadecimal digits, the
first of which is a 6.
The number 0.375 is represented in single precision as 4060 0000.
The number 0.375 is represented in double precision as 4060 0000 0000 0000.
Example 4: A Full
Conversion
The number to be converted is 123.45. As
we have hinted, this is a non–terminator.
Convert the integer part.
123
/ 16 = 7 with remainder 11 this
is hexadecimal digit B.
7 / 16 = 0 with remainder 7 this
is hexadecimal digit 7.
Reading bottom to top, the integer part converts as 0x7B.
Convert the fractional part.
0.45
· 16
= 7.20 Extract the 7,
0.20
· 16
= 3.20 Extract the 3,
0.20
· 16
= 3.20 Extract the 3,
0.20
· 16
= 3.20 Extract the 3,
and so on.
In the standard format, this number is 162·0x0.7B33333333…...
The exponent value is 2, so the
characteristic value is either 66 or 0x42 = 100 0010.
The first two hexadecimal digits in the eight digit representation are formed
as follows.
|
Field |
Sign |
Characteristic |
||||||
|
Value |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Hex value |
4 |
2 |
||||||
The number 123.45 is represented in single precision as 427B 3333.
The number 0.375 is represented in double precision as 427B 3333 3333 3333.
Example 5: One in
“Reverse”
We are given the single precision representation of the number. It is 4110 0000.
What is the value of the number stored?
We begin by examination of the first two hex digits.
|
Field |
Sign |
Characteristic |
||||||
|
Value |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
Hex value |
4 |
1 |
||||||
The sign bit is 0, so the number is positive. The characteristic is 0x41, so the exponent
is
1 and the value may be represented by X·161. The fraction field is 100 000, so the
value is
161·(1/16)
= 1.0.
Packed Decimal Formats
While the IBM mainframe provides three floating–point
formats, it also provides another
format for use in what are called “fixed point” calculations. The term “fixed point” refers to
decimal numbers in which the decimal point takes a predictable place in the
number; money
transactions in dollars and cents are a good and very important example of
this.
Consider a ledger such as might be maintained by a
commercial firm. This contains credits
and debits, normally entered as money amounts with dollars and cents. The amount that
might be printed as “$1234.56” could easily be stored as the integer 123456 if
the program
automatically adjusted to provide the implicit decimal point. This fact is the basis for the
Packed Decimal Format developed by IBM in response to its business customers.
One may well ask “Why not use floating point formats for
financial transactions?”. We
present a fairly realistic scenario to illustrate the problem with such a
choice. This example
is based on your author’s experience as a consultant to a bank in Rochester,
NY.
It is a fact that banks loan each other money on an
overnight basis; that is, the bank borrows
the money at 6:00 PM today and repays it at 6:00 AM tomorrow. While this may seem a bit
strange to those of us who think in terms of 20–year mortgages, it is an
important practice.
Overnight loans in the amount of one hundred million dollars are not uncommon.
Suppose that I am a bank officer, and that another bank
wants to borrow $100,000,000
overnight. I would like to make the
loan, but do not have the cash on hand.
On the other
hand, I know a bank that will lend me the money at a smaller interest
rate. I can make the
loan and pocket the profit.
Suppose that the borrowing bank is willing to pay 8% per
year on the borrowed amount.
This corresponds to a payback of (1.08)1/730 = 1.0001054, which is
$10,543 in interest.
Suppose that I have to borrow the money at 6% per
annum. This corresponds to my paying
at a rate of (1.06)1/730 = 1.0000798, which is a cost of $7,982 to
me. I make $2,561.
Consider these numbers as single–precision floating point format in the IBM Mainframe.
My original money amount is $100,000,000
The interest I make is $10,543
My principal plus interest is $100,010,500 Note the truncation due to precision.
The interest I pay is $7,982
What I get back is $100,002,000 Again, note the truncation.
The use of floating–point arithmetic has cost me $561 for an
overnight transaction. I do not
like that. I do not like numbers that
are rounded off; I want precise arithmetic.
Almost all banks and financial institutions demanded some
sort of precise decimal
arithmetic; IBM’s answer was the Packed Decimal format.
BCD (Binary Coded Decimal)
The best way to introduce the
Packed Decimal Data format is to first present an earlier
format for encoding decimal digits. This format is called BCD, for “Binary Coded Decimal”.
As may be inferred from its name, it is a precursor to EBCDIC (Extended BCD
Interchange
Code) in addition to heavily influencing the Packed Decimal Data format.
We shall introduce BCD and
compare it to the 8–bit unsigned binary previously discussed for
storing unsigned integers in the range 0 through 255 inclusive. While BCD doubtless had
encodings for negative numbers, we shall postpone signed notation to Packed
Decimal.
The essential difference between
BCD and 8–bit binary is that BCD encodes each decimal in
a separate 4–bit field (sometimes called “nibble” for half–byte). This contrasts with the usual
binary notation in which it is the magnitude of the number (and not the number
of digits) that
determines whether or not it can be represented in the format.
We begin with a table of the BCD
codes for each of the ten decimal digits.
These codes are
given in both binary and hexadecimal. It
will be important for future discussions to note that
these encodings are actually hexadecimal digits; they just appear to be decimal
digits.
|
Digit |
‘0’ |
‘1’ |
‘2’ |
‘3’ |
‘4’ |
‘5’ |
‘6’ |
‘7’ |
‘8’ |
‘9’ |
|
Binary |
0000 |
0001 |
0010 |
0011 |
0100 |
0101 |
0110 |
0111 |
1000 |
1001 |
|
Hexadecimal |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
To emphasize the difference between 8–bit unsigned binary and
BCD, we shall examine a
selection of two–digit numbers and their encodings in each system.
|
Decimal Number |
8–bit binary |
BCD (Represented in binary) |
BCD (hexadecimal) |
|
5 |
0000 0101 |
0000 0101 |
05 |
|
13 |
0000 1101 |
0001 0011 |
13 |
|
17 |
0001 0001 |
0001 0111 |
17 |
|
23 |
0001 0111 |
0010 0011 |
23 |
|
31 |
0001 1111 |
0011 0001 |
31 |
|
64 |
0100 0000 |
0110 0100 |
64 |
|
89 |
0101 1001 |
1000 1001 |
89 |
|
96 |
0110 0000 |
1001 0110 |
96 |
As a hypothetical aside, consider the storage of BCD numbers
on a byte–addressable
computer. The smallest addressable unit
would be an 8–bit byte. As a result of
this, all BCD
numbers would need to have an even number of digits, as to fill up an integral
number of
bytes. Our solution to the storage of
integers with an odd number of digits is to recall that a
leading zero does not change the value of the integer.
In this hypothetical
scheme of storage:
1 would
be stored as 01,
22 would
be stored as 22,
333 would
be stored as 0333,
4444 would
be stored as 4444,
55555 would be stored as 055555, and
666666 would be stored as 666666.
Packed
Decimal Data
The
packed decimal format should be viewed as a generalization of the BCD format
with the
specific goal of handling the fixed point arithmetic so common in financial
transactions. The
two extensions of the BCD format are as follows:
1. The
provision of a sign “half byte” so that negative numbers can be handled.
2. The
provision for variable length strings.
While the term
“fixed point” is rarely used in computer literature these days, the format is
very common. Consider any transaction
denominated in dollars and cents. The
amount will
be represented as a real number with exactly two digits to the right of the
decimal point; that
decimal point has a fixed position in the notation, hence the name “fixed
point”.
The packed decimal
format provides for a varying number of digits, one per half–byte,
followed by a half–byte denoting the sign of the number. Because of the standard byte
addressability issues, the number of half–bytes in the representation must be
an even number;
given the one half–byte reserved for the sign, this implies an odd number of
digits.
In the BCD
encodings, we use one hexadecimal digit to encode each of the decimal
digits.
This leaves the six higher–valued hexadecimal digits (A, B, C, D, E, and F)
with no use; in
BCD these just do not encode any values.
In Packed Decimal, each of these will encode a
sign. Here are the most common
hexadecimal digits used to represent signs.
|
Binary |
Hexadecimal |
Sign |
Comment |
|
1100 |
C |
+ |
The standard plus sign |
|
1101 |
D |
– |
The standard minus sign |
|
1111 |
F |
+ |
A plus sign seen in converted EBCDIC |
We now move to the
IBM implementation of the packed decimal format. This section breaks
with the tone previously established in this chapter – that of discussing a
format in general
terms and only then discussing the IBM implementation. The reason for this change is
simple; the IBM implementation of the packed decimal format is the only one
used.
The Syntax of Packed Decimal Format
1. The
length of a packed decimal number may be from 1 to 31 digits; the
number being stored in
memory as 1 to 16 bytes.
2. The
rightmost half–byte of the number contains the sign indicator. In constants
defined by code, this is
0xC for positive numbers and 0xD for negative.
3. The
remaining number of half–bytes (always an odd number) contain the
hexadecimal encodings of
the decimal digits in the number.
4. The
rightmost byte in the memory representation of the number holds one
digit and the sign
half–byte. All other bytes hold two
digits.
5. The number zero is always represented as the two digits 0C, never 0D.
6. Any
number with an even number of digits will be converted to an equivalent
number with a prepended “0”
prior to storage as packed decimal.
7. Although
the format allows for storage of numbers with decimal points, neither
the decimal point nor any
indication of its position is stored. As
an example,
each of 1234.5, 123.45,
12.345, and 1.2345 is stored as 12345C.
There
are two common ways to generate numbers in packed decimal format, and quite a
variety of instructions to operate on data in this format. We might discuss these in later
chapters. For the present, we shall just
show a few examples.
1. Store
the positive number 144 in packed decimal format.
Note
that the number 144 has an odd number of digits. The format just adds the half–byte
for non–negative numbers, generating the representation 144C. This value is often written
as 14
4C, with the space used to emphasize the grouping of half–bytes by
twos.
2. Store
the negative number –1023 in packed decimal format.
Note
that the magnitude of the number (1023) has an even number of digits, so the
format
will prepend a “0” to produce the equivalent number 01023, which has an odd
number of
digits. The value stored is 01023D,
often written as 01 02 3D.
2. Store
the negative number –7 in packed decimal format.
Note
that the magnitude of the number (7) has an odd number of digits, so the format
just adds the sign half–byte to generate the representation 7D.
4. Store
the positive number 123.456 in packed decimal format.
Note
that the decimal point is not stored.
This is the same as the storage of the number
123456 (which has a decidedly different value).
This number has an even number of digits,
so that it is converted to the equivalent value 0123456 and stored as 01
23 45 6C.
5. Store
the positive number 1.23456 in packed decimal format.
Note
that the decimal point is not stored.
This is the same as the storage of the number
123456 (which has a decidedly different value).
This number has an even number of digits,
so that it is converted to the equivalent value 0123456 and stored as 01
23 45 6C.
6. Store
the positive number 12345.6 in packed decimal format.
Note
that the decimal point is not stored.
This is the same as the storage of the number
123456 (which has a decidedly different value).
This number has an even number of digits,
so that it is converted to the equivalent value 0123456 and stored as 01
23 45 6C.
7. Store
the number 0 in packed decimal form.
Note
that 0 is neither positive nor negative.
IBM convention treats the zero as a positive
number, and always stores it as 0C.
8. Store
the number 12345678901234567890 in packed decimal form.
Note
that very large numbers are easily stored in this format. The number has 20 digits, an
even number, so it must first be converted to the equivalent
012345678901234567890. It is
stored as 01
23 45 67 89 01 23 45 67 89 0C.
Comparison: Floating–Point and Packed
Decimal
Here are a few obvious comments on the relative advantages of each format.
1. Packed decimal format can provide great
precision and range, more that is required
for any conceivable financial
transaction. It does not suffer from
round–off errors.
2. The packed decimal format requires the code
to track the decimal points explicitly.
This is easily done for addition and
subtraction, but harder for other operations.
The floating–point format provides
automatic management of the decimal point.
Character Codes: ASCII
We now consider the methods by which computers store
character data. There are three
character codes of interest: ASCII, EBCDIC, and Unicode. The EBCDIC code is only used
by IBM in its mainframe computer. The
ASCII code is by far more popular, so we consider
it first and then consider Unicode, which can be viewed as a generalization of
ASCII.
The figure below shows the ASCII code. Only the first 128 characters (Codes 00 – 7F
in
hexadecimal) are standard. There are
several interesting facts.
|
Last Digit \ First Digit |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
0 |
NUL |
DLE |
SP |
0 |
@ |
P |
` |
p |
|
1 |
SOH |
DC1 |
! |
1 |
A |
Q |
a |
q |
|
2 |
STX |
DC2 |
“ |
2 |
B |
R |
b |
r |
|
3 |
ETX |
DC3 |
# |
3 |
C |
S |
c |
s |
|
4 |
EOT |
DC4 |
$ |
4 |
D |
T |
d |
t |
|
5 |
ENQ |
NAK |
% |
5 |
E |
U |
e |
u |
|
6 |
ACK |
SYN |
& |
6 |
F |
V |
f |
v |
|
7 |
BEL |
ETB |
` |
7 |
G |
W |
g |
w |
|
8 |
BS |
CAN |
( |
8 |
H |
X |
h |
x |
|
9 |
HT |
EM |
) |
9 |
I |
Y |
i |
y |
|
A |
LF |
SUB |
* |
: |
J |
Z |
j |
z |
|
B |
VT |
ESC |
+ |
; |
K |
[ |
k |
{ |
|
C |
FF |
FS |
‘ |
< |
L |
\ |
l |
| |
|
D |
CR |
GS |
- |
= |
M |
] |
m |
} |
|
E |
SO |
RS |
. |
> |
N |
^ |
n |
~ |
|
F |
SI |
US |
/ |
? |
O |
_ |
o |
|
As ASCII is designed to be an 8–bit code, several
manufacturers have defined extended code
sets, which make use of the codes 0x80 through 0xFF (128 through 255). One of the more
popular was defined by IBM. None are
standard; most books ignore them. So do
we.
Let X be the ASCII code for a digit. Then X – ‘0’ = X – 30 is the value of the
digit.
For example ASCII(‘7’) = 37, with value 37 – 30 = 7.
Let X be an ASCII code. If ASCII(‘A’) Ł X Ł ASCII(‘Z’) then X is an
upper case letter.
If
ASCII(‘a’) Ł
X Ł
ASCII(‘z’) then X is an lower case letter.
If ASCII(‘0’) Ł X Ł ASCII(‘9’) then X is a decimal digit.
Let X be an upper-case letter. Then ASCII ( lower_case(X) ) = ASCII ( X ) + 32
Let X be a lower case
letter. Then ASCII ( UPPER_CASE(X) ) =
ASCII (X ) – 32.
The expressions are ASCII ( X ) + 20 and ASCII (X ) – 20 in hexadecimal.
NOTE: The first 32 character codes (decimal
values 0 through 31) are control
characters used to
manage a communication process and are not printed. For
example the BEL (07)
character would ring a bell on old teletype equipment.
Character Codes: EBCDIC
The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) was developed by IBM
in the early 1960’s for use on its System/360 family of computers. It evolved from an older
character set called BCDIC, hence its name.
EBCDIC code uses eight binary
bits to encode a character set; it can encode 256 characters.
The codes are binary numeric values, traditionally represented as two
hexadecimal digits.
Character codes 0x00 through
0x3F and 0xFF represent control characters.
0x0D is the code for a carriage return; this moves the cursor back to
the left margin.
0x20 is used by the ED (Edit) instruction to represent a packed digit
to be printed.
0x21 is used by the ED (Edit) instruction to force significance.
All digits,
including leading 0’s, from this position will be printed.
0x25 is the code for a line feed; this moves the cursor down but not
horizontally.
0x2F is the
Character codes 0x40 through
0x7F represent punctuation characters.
0x40 is the code for a space character: “ ”.
0x4B is the code for a decimal point: “.”.
0x4E is the code for a plus sign: “+”.
0x50 is the code for an ampersand: “&”.
0x5B is the code for a dollar sign: “$”.
0x5C is the code for an asterisk: “*”.
0x60 is the code for a minus sign: “–”.
0x6B is the code for a comma: “,”.
0x6F is the code for a question mark: “?”.
0x7C is the code for the commercial at sign: “@”.
Character codes 0x81 through
0xA9 represent the lower case Latin alphabet.
0x81 through 0x89 represent the letters “a” through “i”,
0x91 through 0x99 represent the letters “j” through “r”, and
0xA2 through 0xA9 represent the letters “s” through “z”.
Character codes 0xC1 through
0xE9 represent the upper case Latin alphabet.
0xC1 through 0xC9 represent the letters “A” through “I”,
0xD1 through 0xD9 represent the letters “J” through “R”, and
0xE2 through 0xE9 represent the letters “S” through “Z”.
Character codes 0xF0 through 0xF9 represent the digits “0” through “9”.
NOTES:
1. The
control characters are mostly used for network data transmissions.
The ones listed above appear
frequently in user code for terminal I/O.
2. There
are gaps in the codes for the alphabetical characters.
This is due to the origins of
the codes for the upper case alphabetic characters
in the card codes used on the
IBM–029 card punch.
3. One
standard way to convert an EBCDIC digit to its numeric value
is to subtract the hexadecimal
number 0xF0 from the character code.
An Abbreviated Table: The Common EBCDIC
|
Code |
Char. |
Comment |
Code |
Char. |
Comment |
Code |
Char. |
Comment |
|
|
|
|
80 |
|
|
C0 |
} |
Right brace |
|
|
|
|
81 |
a |
|
C1 |
A |
|
|
|
|
|
82 |
b |
|
C2 |
B |
|
|
|
|
|
83 |
c |
|
C3 |
C |
|
|
|
|
|
84 |
d |
|
C4 |
D |
|
|
|
|
|
85 |
e |
|
C5 |
E |
|
|
|
|
|
86 |
f |
|
C6 |
F |
|
|
|
|
|
87 |
g |
|
C7 |
G |
|
|
0C |
FF |
Form feed |
88 |
h |
|
C8 |
H |
|
|
0D |
CR |
Return |
89 |
i |
|
C9 |
I |
|
|
16 |
BS |
Back space |
90 |
|
|
D0 |
{ |
Left brace |
|
25 |
LF |
Line Feed |
91 |
j |
|
D1 |
J |
|
|
27 |
ESC |
Escape |
92 |
k |
|
D2 |
K |
|
|
2F |
BEL |
|
93 |
l |
|
D3 |
L |
|
|
40 |
SP |
Space |
94 |
m |
|
D4 |
M |
|
|
4B |
. |
Decimal |
95 |
n |
|
D5 |
N |
|
|
4C |
< |
|
96 |
o |
|
D6 |
O |
|
|
4D |
( |
|
97 |
p |
|
D7 |
P |
|
|
4E |
+ |
|
98 |
q |
|
D8 |
Q |
|
|
4F |
| |
Single Bar |
99 |
r |
|
D9 |
R |
|
|
50 |
& |
|
A0 |
|
|
E0 |
\ |
Back slash |
|
5A |
! |
|
A1 |
~ |
Tilde |
E1 |
|
|
|
5B |
$ |
|
A2 |
s |
|
E2 |
S |
|
|
5C |
* |
|
A3 |
t |
|
E3 |
T |
|
|
5D |
) |
|
A4 |
u |
|
E4 |
U |
|
|
5E |
; |
|
A5 |
v |
|
E5 |
V |
|
|
5F |
|
Not |
A6 |
w |
|
E6 |
W |
|
|
60 |
– |
Minus |
A7 |
x |
|
E7 |
X |
|
|
61 |
/ |
Slash |
A8 |
y |
|
E8 |
Y |
|
|
6A |
¦ |
Dbl. Bar |
A9 |
z |
|
E9 |
Z |
|
|
6B |
, |
Comma |
B0 |
^ |
Carat |
F0 |
0 |
|
|
6C |
% |
Percent |
B1 |
|
|
F1 |
1 |
|
|
6D |
_ |
Underscore |
B2 |
|
|
F2 |
2 |
|
|
6E |
> |
|
B3 |
|
|
F3 |
3 |
|
|
6F |
? |
|
B4 |
|
|
F4 |
4 |
|
|
79 |
‘ |
Apostrophe |
B5 |
|
|
F5 |
5 |
|
|
7A |
: |
|
B6 |
|
|
F6 |
6 |
|
|
7B |
# |
Sharp |
B7 |
|
|
F7 |
7 |
|
|
7C |
@ |
At Sign |
B8 |
|
|
F8 |
8 |
|
|
7D |
' |
Apostrophe |
B9 |
|
|
F9 |
9 |
|
|
7E |
= |
Equals |
BA |
[ |
Left Bracket |
|
|
|
|
7F |
" |
Quote |
BB |
] |
R. Bracket |
|
|
|
It is
worth noting that IBM seriously considered adoption of ASCII as its method for
internal
storage of character data for the System/360.
The American Standard Code for Information
Interchange was approved in 1963 and supported by IBM. However the ASCII code set was
not compatible with the BCDIC used on a very large installed base of support equipment,
such as the IBM 026. Transition to an
incompatible character set would have required any
adopter of the new IBM System/360 to also purchase or lease an entirely new set
of
peripheral equipment; this would have been a deterrence to early adoption.
The
figure below shows a standard 80–column IBM punch card produced by the IBM 029
card punch. This shows the card punch
codes used to represent some EBCDIC characters.
The
structure of the EBCDIC, used for internal character storage on the System/360
and later
computers, was determined by the requirement for easy translation from punch
card codes.
The table below gives a comparison of the two coding schemes.
|
Character |
Punch Code |
EBCDIC |
|
‘0’ |
0 |
F0 |
|
‘1’ |
1 |
F1 |
|
‘9’ |
9 |
F9 |
|
‘A’ |
12 – 1 |
C1 |
|
‘B’ |
12 – 2 |
C2 |
|
‘I’ |
12 – 9 |
C9 |
|
‘J’ |
11 – 1 |
D1 |
|
‘K’ |
11 – 2 |
D2 |
|
‘R’ |
11 – 9 |
D9 |
|
‘S’ |
0 – 2 |
E2 |
|
‘T’ |
0 – 8 |
E3 |
|
‘Z’ |
0 – 9 |
E9 |
Remember
that the punch card codes
represent the card rows punched. Each
digit was represented by a punch in a
single row; the row number was
identical to the value of the digit being
encoded.
The
EBCDIC codes are eight–bit binary
numbers, almost always represented as
two hexadecimal digits. Some IBM
documentation refers to these digits as:
The first digit is the zone potion,
The second digit is the numeric.
A
comparison of the older card punch codes with the EBCDIC shows that its design
was
intended to facilitate the translation.
For digits, the numeric punch row became the numeric
part of the EBCDIC representation, and the zone part was set to hexadecimal
F. For the
alphabetical characters, the second numeric row would become the numeric part
and the
first punch row would determine the zone portion of the EBCDIC.
This
matching with punched card codes explains the “gaps” found in the EBCDIC
set.
Remember that these codes are given as hexadecimal numbers, so that the code
immediately
following C9 would be CA (as hexadecimal A is decimal 10). But the code for ‘J’ is not
hexadecimal CA, but hexadecimal D1.
Also, note that the EBCDIC representation for the
letter ‘S’ is not E1 but E2. This is a
direct consequence of the design of the punch cards.
Character Codes: UNICODE
The UNICODE character set is a
generalization of the ASCII character set to allow for the
fact that many languages in the world do not use the Latin alphabet. The important thing to
note here is that UNICODE characters consume 16 bits (two bytes) while ASCII and
EBCDIC character codes are 8 bits (one byte) long. This has some implications in
programming with modern languages, such as Visual Basic and Visual C++,
especially in
allocation of memory space to hold strings.
This seems to be less of an issue in Java.
An obvious implication of the
above is that, while each of ASCII and EBCDIC use two
hexadecimal digits to encode a character, UNICODE uses four hexadecimal digits. In part,
UNICODE was designed as a replacement for the ad–hoc “code pages” then in
use. These
pages allowed arbitrary 256–character sets by a complete redefinition of ASCII,
but were
limited to 256 characters. Some
languages, such as Chinese, require many more characters.
UNICODE is downward compatible
with the ASCII code set; the characters represented by
the UNICODE codes 0x0000 through 0x007F are exactly those codes represented by
the
standard ASCII codes 0x00 through 0x7F.
In other words, to convert standard ASCII to
correct UNICODE, just add two leading hexadecimal 0’s and make a two–byte code.
The origins of Unicode date back
to 1987 when Joe Becker from Xerox and Lee Collins and
Mark Davis from Apple
started investigating the practicalities of creating a universal
character set. In August of the following year Joe Becker published a draft
proposal for an
"international/multilingual text character encoding system, tentatively
called Unicode."
In this document, entitled Unicode 88, he outlined a
16 bit character model:
“Unicode is intended to address the need
for a workable, reliable world text
encoding. Unicode could be roughly described as "wide-body ASCII" that
has
been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the world's living
languages. In a properly engineered design, 16 bits per character are more than
sufficient for this purpose.”
In fact the 16–bit (four
hexadecimal digit) code scheme has proven not to be adequate to
encode every possible character set. The
original code space (0x0000 – 0xFFFF) was
defined as the “Basic Multilingual
Plane”, or BMP. Supplementary planes
have been
added, so that as of September 2008 there were over 1,100,000 “code points” in
UNICODE.
Here is a complete listing of
the character sets and languages supported by the Basic
Multilingual Plane. The source is http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/java/unicode.html.
|
Range |
Decimal |
Name |
|
0x0000-0x007F |
0-127 |
Basic Latin
(what we normally use) |
|
0x0080-0x00FF |
128-255 |
Latin-1
Supplement |
|
0x0100-0x017F |
256-383 |
Latin
Extended-A |
|
0x0180-0x024F |
384-591 |
Latin
Extended-B |
|
0x0250-0x02AF |
592-687 |
IPA Extensions |
|
0x02B0-0x02FF |
688-767 |
Spacing
Modifier Letters |
|
0x0300-0x036F |
768-879 |
Combining
Diacritical Marks |
|
0x0370-0x03FF |
880-1023 |
Greek |
|
0x0400-0x04FF |
1024-1279 |
Cyrillic |
|
0x0530-0x058F |
1328-1423 |
Armenian |
|
0x0590-0x05FF |
1424-1535 |
Hebrew |
|
0x0600-0x06FF |
1536-1791 |
Arabic |
|
0x0700-0x074F |
1792-1871 |
Syriac |
|
0x0780-0x07BF |
1920-1983 |
Thaana |
|
0x0900-0x097F |
2304-2431 |
Devanagari |
|
0x0980-0x09FF |
2432-2559 |
Bengali |
|
0x0A00-0x0A7F |
2560-2687 |
Gurmukhi |
|
0x0A80-0x0AFF |
2688-2815 |
Gujarati |
|
0x0B00-0x0B7F |
2816-2943 |
Oriya |
|
0x0B80-0x0BFF |
2944-3071 |
Tamil |
|
0x0C00-0x0C7F |
3072-3199 |
Telugu |
|
0x0C80-0x0CFF |
3200-3327 |
Kannada |
|
0x0D00-0x0D7F |
3328-3455 |
Malayalam |
|
0x0D80-0x0DFF |
3456-3583 |
Sinhala |
|
0x0E00-0x0E7F |
3584-3711 |
Thai |
|
0x0E80-0x0EFF |
3712-3839 |
Lao |
|
0x0F00-0x0FFF |
3840-4095 |
Tibetan |
|
0x1000-0x109F |
4096-4255 |
Myanmar |
|
0x10A0-0x10FF |
4256-4351 |
Georgian |
|
0x1100-0x11FF |
4352-4607 |
Hangul Jamo |
|
0x1200-0x137F |
4608-4991 |
Ethiopic |
|
0x13A0-0x13FF |
5024-5119 |
Cherokee |
|
0x1400-0x167F |
5120-5759 |
Unified
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics |
|
0x1680-0x169F |
5760-5791 |
Ogham |
|
0x16A0-0x16FF |
5792-5887 |
Runic |
|
0x1780-0x17FF |
6016-6143 |
Khmer |
|
0x1800-0x18AF |
6144-6319 |
Mongolian |
|
Range |
Decimal |
Name |
|
0x1E00-0x1EFF |
7680-7935 |
Latin Extended
Additional |
|
0x1F00-0x1FFF |
7936-8191 |
Greek Extended |
|
0x2000-0x206F |
8192-8303 |
General
Punctuation |
|
0x2070-0x209F |
8304-8351 |
Superscripts
and Subscripts |
|
0x20A0-0x20CF |
8352-8399 |
Currency
Symbols |
|
0x20D0-0x20FF |
8400-8447 |
Combining Marks
for Symbols |
|
0x2100-0x214F |
8448-8527 |
Letter–like
Symbols |
|
0x2150-0x218F |
8528-8591 |
Number Forms |
|
0x2190-0x21FF |
8592-8703 |
Arrows |
|
0x2200-0x22FF |
8704-8959 |
Mathematical
Operators |
|
0x2300-0x23FF |
8960-9215 |
Miscellaneous
Technical |
|
0x2400-0x243F |
9216-9279 |
Control
Pictures |
|
0x2440-0x245F |
9280-9311 |
Optical
Character Recognition |
|
0x2460-0x24FF |
9312-9471 |
Enclosed Alphanumerics
|
|
0x2500-0x257F |
9472-9599 |
Box Drawing |
|
0x2580-0x259F |
9600-9631 |
Block Elements |
|
0x25A0-0x25FF |
9632-9727 |
Geometric
Shapes |
|
0x2600-0x26FF |
9728-9983 |
Miscellaneous
Symbols |
|
0x2700-0x27BF |
9984-10175 |
Dingbats |
|
0x2800-0x28FF |
10240-10495 |
Braille
Patterns |
|
0x2E80-0x2EFF |
11904-12031 |
CJK Radicals
Supplement |
|
0x2F00-0x2FDF |
12032-12255 |
Kangxi Radicals
|
|
0x2FF0-0x2FFF |
12272-12287 |
Ideographic
Description Characters |
|
0x3000-0x303F |
12288-12351 |
CJK Symbols and
Punctuation |
|
0x3040-0x309F |
12352-12447 |
Hiragana |
|
0x30A0-0x30FF |
12448-12543 |
Katakana |
|
0x3100-0x312F |
12544-12591 |
Bopomofo |
|
0x3130-0x318F |
12592-12687 |
Hangul
Compatibility Jamo |
|
0x3190-0x319F |
12688-12703 |
Kanbun |
|
0x31A0-0x31BF |
12704-12735 |
Bopomofo
Extended |
|
0x3200-0x32FF |
12800-13055 |
Enclosed CJK
Letters and Months |
|
0x3300-0x33FF |
13056-13311 |
CJK
Compatibility |
|
0x3400-0x4DB5 |
13312-19893 |
CJK Unified
Ideographs Extension A |
|
0x4E00-0x9FFF |
19968-40959 |
CJK Unified
Ideographs |
|
0xA000-0xA48F |
40960-42127 |
Yi Syllables |
|
0xA490-0xA4CF |
42128-42191 |
Yi Radicals |
|
0xAC00-0xD7A3 |
44032-55203 |
Hangul
Syllables |
|
0xD800-0xDB7F |
55296-56191 |
High Surrogates
|
|
0xDB80-0xDBFF |
56192-56319 |
High Private
Use Surrogates |
|
Range |
Decimal |
Name |
|
0xDC00-0xDFFF |
56320-57343 |
Low Surrogates |
|
0xE000-0xF8FF |
57344-63743 |
Private Use |
|
0xF900-0xFAFF |
63744-64255 |
CJK
Compatibility Ideographs |
|
0xFB00-0xFB4F |
64256-64335 |
Alphabetic
Presentation Forms |
|
0xFB50-0xFDFF |
64336-65023 |
Arabic
Presentation Forms-A |
|
0xFE20-0xFE2F |
65056-65071 |
Combining Half
Marks |
|
0xFE30-0xFE4F |
65072-65103 |
CJK
Compatibility Forms |
|
0xFE50-0xFE6F |
65104-65135 |
Small Form
Variants |
|
0xFE70-0xFEFE |
65136-65278 |
Arabic
Presentation Forms-B |
|
0xFEFF-0xFEFF |
65279-65279 |
Specials |
|
0xFF00-0xFFEF |
65280-65519 |
Halfwidth and Fullwidth
Forms |
|
0xFFF0-0xFFFD |
65520-65533 |
Specials |
Here is a bit of the Greek alphabet as encoded in the BMP.
For those with more esoteric tastes, here is a small sample of Cuneiform in 32–bit Unicode.
Now we see some Egyptian hieroglyphics, also with the 32–bit Unicode encoding.
We close this chapter with a
small sample of the 16–bit BMP encoding for the CJK
(Chinese, Japanese, & Korean) character set. Unlike the above two examples (Cuneiform
and Egyptian hieroglyphics) this is a living language.
As a final note, we mention the
fact that some fans of the Star Trek series have proposed that
the alphabet for the Klingon language be included in the Unicode 32–bit
encodings. So far,
they have inserted it in the Private Use section (0xE000-0xF8FF). It is not yet recognized as
an official part of the Unicode standard.
Solved Problems
As is obvious from the variety of fonts, these problems have been assembled
from a variety
of sources. All of these problems have
been used in a teaching context.
1. What range of integers can
be stored in an 16–bit word if
a)
the number is stored as an unsigned integer?
b)
the number is stored in two’s–complement form?
Answer: a) 0
through 65,535 inclusive, or 0 through 216 – 1.
b) –32768 through 32767
inclusive, or –(215) through (215) – 1
2 You are given the 16–bit value, represented
as four hexadecimal digits,
and stored in two bytes. The value is 0x812D.
a) What is the decimal value stored here, if interpreted as a packed decimal number?
b) What
is the decimal value stored, if interpreted as a 16–bit two’s–complement
integer?
c) What is the decimal value stored here, if interpreted as a 16–bit unsigned integer?
ANSWER: The answers are found in the lectures for January 13 and
January 20.
a) For a packed decimal number, the absolute
value is 812 and the value is negative.
The answer is –812.
b) To render this as a two’s–complement
integer, one first has to convert to binary.
Hexadecimal 812D converts to 1000 0001 0010 1101. This is negative.
Take the one’s complement
to get 0111 1110 1101 0010.
Add 1 to get the positive
value 0111 1110 1101 0011.
In hexadecimal, this is 7ED3, which converts to 7·163 + 14·162 + 13·16 + 3,
or 7·4096 + 14·256
+ 13·16 + 3 = 28672 + 3584 + 208 + 3
= 32,467
The answer is –32,467.
c) As an unsigned binary number the value is
obtained by direct conversion from
the hexadecimal value. The value is 8·163 + 1·162 + 2·16 + 13,
or 8·4096 + 1·256
+ 2·16 + 13 = 32768 + 256 + 32 + 13
= 33069.
3. Give the 8–bit two’s complement representation of the number – 98.
Answer: 98 = 96 + 2 = 64 + 32 + 2, so its
binary representation is 0110 0010.
8–bit
representation of + 98 0110 0010
One’s complement 1001 1101
Add 1 to get 1001 1110 9E.
4. Give the 16–bit two’s complement representation of the number – 98.
Answer: The 8–bit representation of – 98 is 1001 1110
Sign extend to
16 bits 1111 1111 1001 1110
5 Convert the following decimal numbers to binary.
a) 37.375 b) 93.40625
ANSWER: Recall that
the integer part and fractional part are converted separately.
a) 37.375
37 / 2 = 18 rem
1
18 / 2 = 9 rem 0
9 / 2 = 4 rem 1
4 / 2 = 2 rem
0
2 / 2 = 1 rem
0
1 / 2 = 0 rem
1 Answer: 100101.
0.375 · 2 = 0.75
0.75 · 2 = 1.50
0.50 · 2 = 1.00
0.00 · 2 = 0.00 Answer 0.011 100101.011
b) 93.40625
93 / 2 = 46 rem
1
46 / 2 = 23 rem
0
23 / 2 = 11 rem
1
11 / 2 = 5 rem 1
5 / 2 = 2 rem 1
2 / 2 = 1 rem 0
1 / 2 = 0 rem 1 Answer: 1011101
0.40625 · 2 = 0.8125
0.8125 · 2 = 1.6250
0.625 · 2 = 1.2500
0.25 · 2 = 0.5000
0.50 · 2 = 1.0000
0.00 · 2 = 0.0000 Answer: 0.01101 1011101.01101
6 Convert the following hexadecimal number to
decimal numbers.
The numbers are unsigned. Use as many digits as necessary
a) 0x022 b) 0x0BAD c) 0x0EF
ANSWER: A = 10, B = 11, C = 12, D = 13, E = 14, F = 15
160 = 1, 161 = 16, 162 = 256, 163 = 4096, 164 = 65536
a) 0x022 = 2·16 + 2 = 32 + 2 = 34 34
b) 0x0BAD = 11·162 + 10·16 + 13 = 11·256 + 10·16
+ 13
= 2816 + 160 + 13 = 2989 2989
c) 0x0EF = 14·16 + 15 = 224 + 15 =
239 239
7 Show the IEEE–754 single precision
representation of the following real numbers.
Show all eight hexadecimal digits
associated with each representation.
a) 0.0 b) – 1.0 c)
7.625 d) – 8.75
ANSWER:
a) 0.0 = 0x0000 0000 0x0000 0000
b) – 1.0 this is negative, so the sign
bit is S = 1
1.0 = 1.0·20
1.M = 1.0 so M = 0000
P = 0 so P + 127 = 127 =
0111 11112
Concatenate S |
(P + 127) | M 1 0111 1111 0000
Group by 4’s from the left 1011 1111 1000 0
Pad out the last to four bits 1011 1111 1000 0000
Convert to hex digits BF80
Pad out to eight hexadecimal digits 0xBF80 0000
c) 7.625 this is non-negative, so the sign
bit is S = 0
Convert 7.625 to binary.
7 = 4 + 2 +
1 01112
0.625 = 5/8
= 1/2 + 1/8 .1012
7.625 111.1012
Normalize by moving the binary point
two places to the left. 1.11101·22
Thus saying that 22 Ł 7.625 < 23.
1.M =
1.11101 so M = 11101
P = 2 so P + 127 = 129 =
1000 0001
Concatenate S |
(P + 127) | M 0 1000 0001 11101
Group by 4’s from the left 0100 0000 1111 01
Pad out the last to four bits 0100 0000 1111 0100
Covert to hex digits 40F4 0x40F4 0000
d) – 8.75 this is negative, so S = 1
8.75 = 8 + 1/2 + 1/4 1000.11
1.00011·23
1.M =
1.00011 so M = 00011
P = 3 so P + 127 = 130 1000
0010
Concatenate S | (P + 127) | M 1 1000 0010 00011
Group by 4’s from the left 1100 0001 0000 11
Pad out the last to four bits 1100 0001 0000 1100
Convert to hex digits C10C 0xC10C 0000
8 Give the value of the real number (in standard decimal
representation) represented by the
following 32-bit words stored as an IEEE standard single precision.
a) 4068
0000 b) 42E8 0000 c) C2E8 0000
ANSWERS:
The
first step in solving these problems is to convert the hexadecimal to binary.
a) 4068 0000 = 0100 0000 0110 1000 0000 0000
0000 0000
Regroup to get 0 1000 0000 1101 0000 etc.
Thus s = 0 (not a negative number)
p + 127 = 100000002 = 12810,
so p = 1
and m = 1101, so 1.m =
1.1101 and the number is 1.1101·21 = 11.1012.
But 11.1012 = 2 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/8 = 3 + 5/8 = 3.625.
b) 42E8 0000 = 0100
0010 1110 1000 0000 0000 0000 0000
Regroup to get 0 1000 0101 1101 0000 etc
Thus s = 0 (not a negative number)
p + 127 = 100001012 = 128 + 4
+ 1 = 133, hence p = 6
and m = 1101, so 1.m =
1.1101 and the number is 1.1101·26 = 11101002
But 11101002 = 64 + 32 + 16 + 4 = 96 + 20 = 116 = 116.0
c) C2E80 0000 = 1100 0010 1110 1000 0000
0000 0000 0000
Regroup to get 1 1000 0101 1101 0000 etc.
Thus s = 1 (a negative number) and the
rest is the same as b). So – 116.0
9 Consider the string of digits “2108”.
a) Show
the coding of this digit string in EBCDIC.
b) How
many bytes does this encoding take?
ANSWER: F2 F1 F0 F8.
Four bytes.
10 Consider
the positive number 2108.
a) Show
the representation of this number in packed decimal format.
b) How
many bytes does this representation take?
ANSWER: To get an odd number of decimal digits, this
must be represented
with a leading 0, as
02108. 02 10 8C. Three bytes.
11 The following block of bytes contains EBCDIC
characters.
Give the English sentence
represented.
E3 C8 C5 40
C5 D5 C4 4B
Answer: E3 C8 C5 40 C5 D5 C4 4B
T H
E E N
D . “THE END.”
12 Perform the following sums assuming that each is a hexadecimal
number.
Show the
results as 16–bit (four hexadecimal digit) results.
a) 123C + 888C
b) 123C + 99D
ANSWER: a) In hexadecimal C + C = 18 (12
+ 12 = 24 = 16 + 8).
3
+ 8 + 1 = C (Decimal 12 is
0xC)
2
+ 8 + 0 = A (Decimal 10 is
0xA)
1
+ 8 + 0 = 9. 9AC8
b) In hexadecimal C + D = 19 (12
+ 13 = 25 = 16 + 9)
3
+ 9 + 1 = D (Decimal 13 is
0xD)
2
+ 9 + 0 = B (Decimal 11 is
0xB)
1
+ 0 + 0 = 1 1BD9
Each of the previous two
problems uses numbers written as 123C and 888C.
The numbers in the
problem on packed decimal are not
the same as those in
the problem on hexadecimal. They just
look the same.
Interpreted as packed
decimal: 123C is interpreted as
the positive number 123, and
888C
is interpreted as the positive number 888.
If we further specify
that each of these is to be read as an integer value, then we have
the two numbers +123 and +888.
Interpreted as
hexadecimal, 123C is interpreted as the decimal number
1·163 + 2·162 + 3·16 + 12 = 4096 + 512 + 48 + 12 = 4,668
Interpreted as
hexadecimal, 888C is interpreted as the decimal number
8·163 + 8·162 + 8·16 + 12 = 32768 + 2048 + 128 + 12 = 34,968
As for the number 1011,
it translates to 0x3F3.
13 The two–byte entry shown below can be interpreted in a number of ways.
VALUE DC X‘021D’
a) What
is its decimal value if it is interpreted as an unsigned binary integer?
b) What
is its decimal value if it is interpreted as a packed decimal value?
ANSWER: As a binary integer, its value is 2·162 + 1·16 + 13 = 512 + 16 + 13 = 541.
As
a packed decimal, this has value – 21.
14 A
given computer uses byte addressing with the little-endian structure.
The following is a memory map, with
all values expressed in hexadecimal.
|
Address |
104 |
105 |
106 |
107 |
108 |
109 |
10A |
10B |
10C |
10D |
|
Value |
C2 |
3F |
84 |
00 |
00 |
00 |
9C |
C1 |
C8 |
C0 |
What is the value (as a decimal real number; e.g. 203.75 ) of
the floating point
number stored at address 108? Assume IEEE–754 single precision format.
Answer: The first thing to notice is that the memory
is byte-addressable. That means that
each address takes holds one byte or eight bits. The IEEE format for single precision
numbers calls for 32 bits to be stored, so the number
takes four bytes of memory.
In
byte addressable systems, the 32-bit entry at address 108 is stored in the four
bytes
with addresses 108, 109, 10A, and 10B.
The contents of these are 00, 00, 9C, and C1.
The
next thing to do is to get the four bytes of the 32-bit number in order.
This is a little-endian memory organization, which means that the LSB is
stored at address
108 and the MSB is stored as address 10B. In correct order, the four bytes are
C1 9C
00 00. In binary, this becomes
1100 0001 1001 1100
0000 0000 0000 0000. Breaking into fields we get
1100 0001 1001 1100
0000 0000 0000 0000, with the exponent field in bold, or
1
1000 0011 0011 1000.
Thus s
= 1 a negative number
e + 127 = 1000 00112
= 128 + 2 + 1 = 131, so e = 4
m = 00111
So the number’s magnitude is 1.001112
· 24 = 10011.12
= 16 + 2 + 1 + 0.5 = 19.5,
and the answer is – 19.5.
15 Consider the 32-bit number represented by the
eight hexadecimal digits
BEEB 0000. What is the value of the floating point
number represented by this
bit pattern assuming that the
IEEE-754 single-precision standard is used?
ANSWER: First recall the binary equivalents: B =
1011, E = 1110, and 0 = 0000.
Convert
the hexadecimal string to binary
Hexadecimal: B
E E B
0 0 0
0
Binary: 1011
1110 1110 1011 0000 0000 0000 0000
Regroup
the binary according to the 1 | 8 | 23 split required by the format.
Binary: 1011
1110 1110 1011 0000 0000 0000 0000
Split: 1 011 1110 1 110 1011 0000
0000 0000 0000
Regrouped: 1 0111 1101
1101 0110 0000 0000 0000 000
The
fields in the expression are now analyzed.
Sign
bit: S = 1 this will become a negative number
Exponent:
The
field contains 0111 1101, or 64 + 32 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 1 = 96 + 24 + 5 = 125. This number
may be more easily derived by noting that 0111 1111 =
127 and this is 2 less.
The exponent is given by P + 127 = 125, or P = – 2. The absolute value of the number being
represented should be in the range [0.25, 0.50), or
0.25 Ł N < 0.50.
Mantissa:
The
mantissa field is 1101 0110, so 1.M = 1.1101 0110.
In
decimal, this equals 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/128, also written as
(128 +
64 + 32 + 8 + 2 + 1) / 128 = (192 + 40 + 3) / 128 = 235 / 128.
The
magnitude of the number equals 235 / 128 · 1/4 = 235 / 512 = 0.458984375.
16 The
following are two examples of the hexadecimal representation of
floating–point numbers
stored in the IBM single–precision format.
Give the decimal
representation of each. Fractions (e.g.,
1/8) are acceptable.
a) C1 64 00 00
b) 3F 50 00 00
ANSWER: a) First look at the sign and exponent
byte. This is 0xC1, or 1100 0001.
|
Bit |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
Value |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
The sign bit is 1, so this is a negative number.
Stripping the sign bit, the exponent field is 0100 0001 or 0x41 = decimal 65.
We have (Exponent + 64) = 65, so the exponent is 1.
The value is 161·F, where F is 0x64, or 6/16 + 4/256.
The magnitude of the number is 161·(6/16 + 4/256) = 6 + 4/16 =
6.25. The value is –6.25.
b) First look at the sign and exponent
byte. This 0x3F, or 0011 1111
The sign bit is 0, so this is a non–negative number.
The exponent field is 0x3F = 3·16 + 15 = decimal 63 = 64 –
1.
The value is 16–1·F, where F is 0x50, or 5/16.
The magnitude of the number is 16–1·(5/16) = 5/256 = 0.01953125.
17 These questions refer to the IBM Packed Decimal Format.
a) How many bytes are required to represent a 3–digit integer?
b) Give the Packed Decimal representation of the positive integer 123.
c) Give the Packed Decimal representation of the negative integer –107.
ANSWER: Recall that each decimal digit is stored as a hexadecimal
digit, and
that the form
calls for one hexadecimal digit to represent the sign.
a) One needs four hexadecimal digits, or two
bytes, to represent three decimal digits.
b) 12 3C c) 10 7D
18 These questions also refer to the IBM Packed Decimal Format.
a) How
many decimal digits can be represented in Packed Decimal form
if three bytes (8 bits
each) are allocated to store the number?
b) What is the Packed Decimal representation of the largest integer stored in 3 bytes?
ANSWER: Recall that N
bytes will store 2·N
hexadecimal digits. With one of these
reserved for
the sign, this is (2·N
– 1) decimal digits.
a) 3 bytes can store five decimal digits.
b) The largest integer is 99,999. It is represented as 99 99 9C.
19 Convert the following numbers to their
representation IBM Single Precision
floating point and give the answers
as hexadecimal digits.
a) 123.75
b) –123.75
ANSWER:
a) First convert the number to hexadecimal.
The whole number conversion: 123
/ 16 = 7 with remainder = 11 (B)
7
/ 16 = 0 with remainder 7. 123 = 7B.
The fractional part conversion: .75·16
= 12 (C). The number is 7B.C
The number can be represented as 162 · 0.7BC; the exponent is 2.
The exponent stored with excess 64, thus it is 66 or X‘42’.
Appending the fractional part, we get X‘427BC’.
Add three hexadecimal zeroes to pad out the answer to X‘427B C000’
b) The only change
here is to add the sign bit as the leftmost bit.
In the positive number, the leftmost byte was X‘42’, which in binary would be
|
Bit |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
Value |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
Just
flip the bit in position 0 to get the answer for the leftmost byte.
|
Bit |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
Value |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
This is
X‘C2’. The answer to this part is X‘C27B C000’
Convert
the following numbers to their representation in packed decimal.
Give the hexadecimal representation
with the proper number of hexadecimal digits.
a) 123.75
b) –123.7
ANSWER: a) 12375 has five digits.
It is represented as 12 37 5C.
b) 1237 has four digits. Expand to 01237 and represent as 01 23 7D.
20 Give the correct Packed Decimal representation of the following numbers.
a) 31.41 b) –102.345 c) 1.02345
ANSWER: Recall that the decimal is not stored, and that we need to have an
odd
count of decimal
digits.
a) This becomes 3141, or 03141. 03141C
b) This becomes 102345, or 0102345 0102345D
c) This also becomes 102345, or 0102345 0102345C.
21 Perform the following sums of numbers in Packed Decimal format.
Convert to
standard integer and show
your math. Use Packed Decimal for the
answers.
a) 025C + 085C d) 666D + 444D
b) 032C + 027D e) 091D + 0C
c) 10003C
+ 09999D
ANSWER: Just do the math required and convert back to standard
Packed
Decimal format.
a) 025C + 085C represents 25 +85 = 110.
This is represented as 110C.
b) 032C + 027D represents 32 –27 = 5.
This is represented as 5C.
c) 10003C + 09999D represents 10003 –9999 = 4.
This is represented as 4C.
d) 666D + 444D represents –666 –444 = –1110. This is represented as 01 11 0D.
e) 091D + 0C represents –91 +0 = –91
This is represented as 091D.
22 These questions concern 10–bit integers, which are not common.
a) What is the range of integers storable in 10–bit unsigned binary form?
b) What is the range of integers storable in 10–bit two’s–complement form?
c) Represent the positive number 366 in 10–bit two’s–complement binary form.
d) Represent the negative number –172 in 10–bit two’s–complement binary form.
e) Represent the number 0 in 10–bit two’s–complement binary form.
ANSWER: Recall that an N–bit scheme can store 2N distinct
representations.
For unsigned
integers, this is the set of integers from 0 through 2N – 1.
For 2’s–complement,
this is the set from – (2N–1) through 2N–1 – 1.
a) For 10–bit unsigned the range is 0 though
210 – 1, or 0 through 1023.
b) For 10–bit 2’s–complement, this is – (29)
through 29 – 1, or – 512 through 511.
c) 366 / 2 = 183 remainder
= 0
183 /
2 = 91 remainder = 1
91
/ 2 = 45 remainder = 1
45
/ 2 = 22 remainder = 1
22
/ 2 = 11 remainder = 0
11
/ 2 = 5 remainder = 1
5
/ 2 = 2 remainder = 1
2
/ 2 = 1 remainder = 0
1
/ 2 = 0 remainder = 1. READ BOTTOM TO TOP!
The answer is 1 0110 1110, or 01 0110 1110, which equals 0x16E.
0x16E = 1·256 + 6·16
+ 14 = 256 + 96 + 14 = 256 + 110 = 366.
The number is not negative, so we stop here. Do not take the two’s complement unless the
number is negative.
d) 172 / 2 = 86 remainder
= 0
86
/ 2 = 43 remainder = 0
43
/ 2 = 21 remainder = 1
21
/ 2 = 10 remainder = 1
10
/ 2 = 5 remainder = 0
5
/ 2 = 2 remainder = 1
2
/ 2 = 1 remainder = 0
1
/ 2 = 0 remainder = 1. READ BOTTOM TO TOP!
This number is 1010 1100, or 00 1010 1100, which equals 0x0AC.
0xAC = 10·16 + 12 = 160 + 12 = 172.
The absolute value: 00 1010 1100
Take the one’s complement: 11 0101 0011
Add one: 1
The answer is: 11 0101 0100 or 0x354.
e) The answer is 00 0000 0000.
You should just know this
one.
23 These questions IBM Packed Decimal Form.
a) Represent the positive number 366 as a packed decimal with fewest digits.
d) Represent the negative number –172 as a packed decimal with fewest digits.
e) Represent the number 0 as a packed decimal with fewest digits.
ANSWER: a) 366C
b) 172D
c) 0C (not 0D, which is incorrect)