Module-1
Data Representation
Dr. Jaishree Mayank
Contents
• Signed number representation,
• Real-Number Representation
• Fixed and Floating-point representations
• Character representation.
Number Systems: The Basics
• We are accustomed to the so-called decimal number system.
– Ten digits :: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
– Every digit position has a weight which is a power of 10.
– Base or radix is 10.
• Examples:
234 = 2 x 102 + 3 x 101 + 4 x 100
250.67 = 2 x 102 + 5 x 101 + 0 x 100 + 6 x 10-1 + 7 x 10-2
Binary Number System
• Two digits: 0 and 1
– Every digit position has a weight that is a power of 2.
– Base or radix is 2.
• Examples: 110 = 1 x 22 + 1 x 21 + 0 x 20
101.01 = 1 x 22 + 0 x 21 + 1 x 20 + 0 x 2-1 + 1 x 2-2
Binary to Decimal Conversion
• Each digit position of a binary number has a weight.
– Some power of 2.
• A binary number: B = bn-1 bn-2 …..b1 b0 . b-1 b-2 ….. b-m
where bi are the binary digits.
Representation of Unsigned Integers
• An n-bit binary number can have 2n distinct combinations.
• For example, for n=3, the 8 distinct combinations are:
• 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111 (0 to 23-1 = 7 in decimal).
Number of bits Range in Numbers
8 0 to 28 -1 (0-255)
16 0 to 216 -1 (0-65535)
32 0 to 232 -1 (0-4294967295)
64 0 to 264-1 (18 quintillion)
• An n-bit binary integer:
• bn-1 bn-2 …..b1 b0
• Equivalent unsigned decimal value:
• D = bn-1x 2(n-1) + bn-2x 2(n-2) …..+ b1x 2(1) b0x 2(0)
where bi are the binary digits.
• Each digit position has a weight that is some power of 2.
Representation of Signed Integers
• Many of the numerical data items that are used in a program are
signed (positive or negative).
• Ques on:: How to represent sign?
• Three possible approaches:
• a) Sign-magnitude representation
• b) One’s complement representation
• c) Two’s complement representation
Sign-magnitude Representation Signed
Integers
• For an n-bit number representation:
▪ The most significant bit (MSB) indicates sign (0: positive, 1: negative).
▪ The remaining (n-1) bits represent the magnitude of the number.
▪ Range of numbers: – (2n-1 – 1) to + (2n-1 – 1)
• n -1th bit is the sign bit.
Problem?
Sign-magnitude Representation
• Addition is performed if sign bits of both the input numbers are same and if they are
different, then subtraction is performed.
• Sign bit of the resultant is ’1’ if both the numbers are negative and the Sign bit is ’0’ if
both the numbers are positive.
• For subtraction,
• if |a| > |b|, then sign bit of a − b is ’0’,
• if |a| < |b|, then sign bit of a − b is ’1’.
• If the result of an operation goes out of the range, then overflow/underflow is
said to occur.
1’ Complement Representation
• Positive numbers are represented exactly as in sign-magnitude form.
• Negative numbers are represented in 1’s complement form.
• How to compute the 1’s complement of a number?
• Complement every bit of the number (1->0 and 0->1).
• MSB will indicate the sign of the number (0: positive, 1: negative).
1’ Complement Representation
Decimal 1’s Decimal 1’s
Complement Complement
To find the representation of, say,
+0 0000 -0 1111 -4, first note that
+1 0001 -1 1110 +4 = 0100
+2 0010 -2 1101 -4 = 1’s complement of 0100 = 1011
+3 0011 -3 1100
+4 0100 -4 1011
+5 0101 -5 1010
+6 0110 -6 1001
+7 0111 -7 1000
1’ Complement Representation
• Range of numbers that can be represented in 1’s complement:
Maximum :: + (2n-1 – 1)
Minimum :: - (2n-1 – 1)
Problem: Two different representations of zero.
+0 -> 0 000….0
-0 -> 1 111….1
Advantage of 1’s complement representation:
• Subtraction can be done using addition.
• Leads to substantial saving in circuitry.
2’ Complement Representation
• Positive numbers are represented exactly as in sign-magnitude form.
• Negative numbers are represented in 2’s complement form.
• How to compute the 2’s complement of a number?
• Complement every bit of the number (1->0 and 0->1), and then add one to
the resulting number.
• MSB will indicate the sign of the number (0: positive, 1: negative).
2’ Complement Representation
Example for n=4
Decimal 2’s Decimal 2’s
Complement Complement
To find the representation of, say,
+0 0000 -0 --- -4, first note that
+1 0001 -1 1111 +4 = 0100
+2 0010 -2 1110 -4 = 1’s complement of 0100 +1
= 1100
+3 0011 -3 1101
+4 0100 -4 1100
+5 0101 -5 1011
+6 0110 -6 1010
+7 0111 -7 1001
-8 1000
2’ Complement Representation
• Range of numbers that can be represented in 2’s complement:
Maximum :: + (2n-1 – 1)
Minimum :: - (2n-1)
Advantage of 1’s complement representation:
• Unique representation of zero.
• Subtraction can be done using addition.
• Leads to substantial saving in circuitry.
• Almost all computers today use 2’s complement representation
for storing negative numbers.
Some other features of 2’s complement
representation
• Weighted number representation, with the MSB having weight -2n-1.
• D= −bn−12n−1+bn−22n−2+...+b020
• Shift by k positions with zero padding multiplies the number by 2k.
• 00010011 = +19 :: Shift left by 2 :: 01001100 = +76
• 11100011 = -29 :: Shift left by 2 :: 10001100 = -116
Some other features of 2’s complement
representation
• Shift right by k positions with sign bit padding divides the number by 2k.
• 00010110 = +22 :: Shift right by 2 :: 00000101 = +5
• 11100100 = -28 :: Shift right by 2 :: 11111001 = -7
• The sign bit can be copied as many times as required in the beginning to
extend the size of the number (called sign extension).
• X = 00101111 (8-bit number, value = +47)
extend to 32 bits: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00101111
• X = 10100011 (8-bit number, value = -93)
Sign extend to 32 bits: 11111111 11111111 11111111 10100011
Representation of Character
• Coding schemes are: ASCII, EBCDIC, UNICODE.
• ASCII : American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
• Bits Used: 7 bits per character.
• Number of Characters Supported: 128 unique symbols (2⁷ = 128).
• Character Range: Includes English letters (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9), punctuation marks, and control
characters (like newline \n, tab \t, etc.).
• Example:
• 'A' → Binary: 1000001 → Decimal: 65
• 'a' → Binary: 1100001 → Decimal: 97
• Advantages:
• Lightweight, efficient for English text.
• Universally supported on older systems.
• Limitations:
• Cannot represent characters from non-English languages like Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, etc.
Representation of Character
• EBCDIC : Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code.
• Bits Used: 8 bits per character.
• Number of Characters Supported: 256 (2⁸ = 256).
• Developed By: IBM, primarily for IBM mainframe systems.
• Structure: Not sequential like ASCII—characters are grouped by type (letters, numbers, control
characters, etc.).
• Example:
• 'A' → Binary: 11000001 (EBCDIC encoding differs from ASCII)
• Advantages:
• Designed for use with punched cards and older IBM systems.
• Slightly larger character set than ASCII.
• Limitations:
• Not widely used outside IBM systems.
• Incompatible with ASCII-based systems.
Representation of Character
UNICODE : It is used to capture most of the languages of the world.
• Bits Used: Originally 16 bits (2 bytes), now variable-length encoding (e.g., UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32).
• Characters Supported: Over 143,000 characters (and growing), across most of the world's writing systems.
• Goal: One universal encoding for all text on all platforms.
• Adopted By: Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Google, and many others.
• Examples:
• 'A' → Unicode: U+0041
• 'ह' (Hindi character) → U+0939
• '中' (Chinese character) → U+4E2D
• Advantages:
• Supports global language representation.
• Enables multilingual computing and internationalization.
• Limitations:
• Larger memory requirements in some encodings (e.g., UTF-32).
• More complex to process than fixed-width encodings like ASCII.
Thanks
