THE LANGUAGE OF COMPUTER
Binary Numbers
Binary number system was devised by Gottfried Leibniz in 1679
The use of binary
In the 1937 Claude Shannon (the father of “information theory”) had
proposed that the use of binary arithmetic and boolean logic should be
used with electronic circuits
The Von-Neumann architecture by the mathematician and physicist John
von Neumann in 1945
Binary Numbers
• Computers understand binary language / machine language
• Combinations of 1's and 0's that represent characters of other
languages
• Don’t make the mistake of thinking that little 1's and 0's are
running around inside of the computer.
We humans prefer to think of 1's and 0's because it’s easier than
visualizing positive and negative current flows or open and
closed circuits which is what actually happens inside computers.
The memory chips in your
computer are divided into
thousands of tiny compartments
called bits.
Each and every bit has an
electronic switch, or gate. ON
means the gate is open and
letting electricity through.
That’s right! The only information your computer can
understand is ON (1) and OFF (0)! They are symbolized by
1’s and 0’s.
All the information that moves through your computer is
based on 2 commands. That’s all, just two.
The millions of combinations of those two commands given in
series are what makes your computer work.
Binary Numbers
• A combination of eight bits represents one character in our language.
• One character in our language (eight bits) is referred to as a byte. (For
example: 01000001 is a byte that represents an uppercase A; each 1
or 0 is a bit.)
Kilobytes, Megabytes, and Gigabytes
• If you understand that a byte is one character in our language, you’ve
got it made because:
• 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte = (210) = (~1,000 characters = 1 kilobyte)
• ~1,000,000 bytes = 1 megabyte (1,000,000 characters = 1 megabyte)
• ~1,000,000,000 bytes = 1 gigabyte (1,000,000,000 characters = 1
gigabyte)
Here is an example of Binary Code:
When you type in the letter A on your keyboard,
electrical signals are sent from the keyboard to the
CPU.
The CPU turns the signals into Binary Code. Then
the computer reads the code and sends it on to the
monitor to display the letter A.
All of that happens in an instant!
So what about Megabytes
and Gigabytes????
Megabytes and Gigabytes
One megabyte equals one million bytes. So, a computer
with 512 megabytes of RAM (Random Access Memory)
means the computer can handle 512,000,000
(512 million) bytes of RAM.
Hard disk space is also measured in bytes. So, a 200 GB
Hard Disk Drive has 200,000,000,000 (200 billion) bytes for
storing memory!
To get an idea of how
much on/off (1/0) data a
computer can store,
imagine pressing any
key 1 billion times. How
long would it take?
You would have to press a key 5 times
a second non-stop for over 6 YEARS to
reach 1 billion keystrokes.
One billion keystrokes equals just
1 GB of memory!
Think about that the next time you think
a webpage is loading too slowly!
THE LANGUAGE OF COMPUTER
• Low Level Language
– Machine Language
– Assembly Language – symbols & codes
• High Level Language
Translators
Translators - usually included within programming software -
convert
high-level code into machine code.
Translators are assemblers, interpreters or compilers.
• Assembler: An assembler translates assembly language into
machine code (also known as source code). Assembly language is
a low-level language written in mnemonics that closely reflects
the operations of the CPU.
Translators
Interpreter
An interpreter translates code into machine code, instruction by
instruction - the CPU executes each instruction before the
interpreter moves on to translate the next instruction. Interpreted
code will show an error as soon as it hits a problem, so it is easier
to debug than compiled code.
Compiler
A compiler translates the whole program into machine code before
the program is run. It can be difficult to test individual lines of
compiled code compared to interpreted languages as all bugs are
reported after the program has been compiled. Eg: Exe Files
Eg: Interpreter – Speech translation real time ; Compiler – Subtitles ;
Thank You
