Data Representation

Computer Organization
&
Assembly Language Programming

Dr Adnan Gutub
aagutub ‘at’ uqu.edu.sa
[Adapted from slides of Dr. Kip Irvine: Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers]
Most Slides contents have been arranged by Dr Muhamed Mudawar & Dr Aiman El-Maleh from Computer Engineering Dept. at KFUPM
 Outline
 Introduction
 Numbering Systems
 Binary & Hexadecimal Numbers
 Base Conversions
 Integer Storage Sizes
 Binary and Hexadecimal Addition
 Signed Integers and 2's Complement Notation
 Binary and Hexadecimal subtraction
 Carry and Overflow
 Character Storage
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 Introduction
 Computers only deal with binary data (0s and 1s), hence all data
manipulated by computers must be represented in binary format.
 Machine instructions manipulate many different forms of data:
 Numbers:
 Integers: 33, +128, -2827
 Real numbers: 1.33, +9.55609, -6.76E12, +4.33E-03
 Alphanumeric characters (letters, numbers, signs, control characters):
examples: A, a, c, 1 ,3, ", +, Ctrl, Shift, etc.
 Images (still or moving): Usually represented by numbers representing
the Red, Green and Blue (RGB) colors of each pixel in an image,
 Sounds: Numbers representing sound amplitudes sampled at a certain
rate (usually 20kHz).
 So in general we have two major data types that need to be
represented in computers; numbers and characters.

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 Numbering Systems
 Numbering systems are characterized by their base
number.
 In general a numbering system with a base r will have r
different digits (including the 0) in its number set. These
digits will range from 0 to r-1
 The most widely used numbering systems are listed in
the table below:

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 Binary Numbers
 Each digit (bit) is either 1 or 0
 Each bit represents a power of 2
 Every binary number is a sum of powers of 2

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 Converting Binary to Decimal
 Weighted positional notation shows how to calculate
the decimal value of each binary bit:
Decimal = (dn-1 2n-1)  (dn-2  2n-2)  ...  (d1  21)  (d0  20)
d = binary digit
 binary 10101001 = decimal 169:
(1  27) + (1  25) + (1  23) + (1  20) = 128+32+8+1=169

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 Convert Unsigned Decimal to Binary
 Repeatedly divide the decimal integer by 2. Each
remainder is a binary digit in the translated value:

least significant bit

most significant bit

stop when
37 = 100101 quotient is zero
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 Another Procedure for Converting from
Decimal to Binary
 Start with a binary representation of all 0’s
 Determine the highest possible power of two that is less
or equal to the number.
 Put a 1 in the bit position corresponding to the highest
power of two found above.
 Subtract the highest power of two found above from the
number.
 Repeat the process for the remaining number

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 Another Procedure for Converting from
Decimal to Binary
 Example: Converting 76d to Binary
 The highest power of 2 less or equal to 76 is 64, hence the
seventh (MSB) bit is 1
 Subtracting 64 from 76 we get 12.
 The highest power of 2 less or equal to 12 is 8, hence the fourth
bit position is 1
 We subtract 8 from 12 and get 4.
 The highest power of 2 less or equal to 4 is 4, hence the third bit
position is 1
 Subtracting 4 from 4 yield a zero, hence all the left bits are set
to 0 to yield the final answer

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 Hexadecimal Integers
 Binary values are represented in hexadecimal.

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 Converting Binary to Hexadecimal
 Each hexadecimal digit corresponds to 4 binary bits.
 Example: Translate the binary integer
000101101010011110010100 to hexadecimal

M1023.swf

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 Converting Hexadecimal to Binary
 Each Hexadecimal digit can be replaced by its 4-bit
binary number to form the binary equivalent.

M1021.swf

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 Converting Hexadecimal to Decimal
 Multiply each digit by its corresponding power of 16:
Decimal = (d3  163) + (d2  162) + (d1  161) + (d0  160)
d = hexadecimal digit
 Examples:
 Hex 1234 = (1  163) + (2  162) + (3  161) + (4  160) =
Decimal 4,660
 Hex 3BA4 = (3  163) + (11 * 162) + (10  161) + (4  160) =
Decimal 15,268

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 Converting Decimal to Hexadecimal
 Repeatedly divide the decimal integer by 16. Each
remainder is a hex digit in the translated value:

least significant digit

most significant digit

stop when
quotient is zero

Decimal 422 = 1A6 hexadecimal

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 Integer Storage Sizes

Standard sizes:

What is the largest unsigned integer that may be stored in 20 bits?

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 Binary Addition
 Start with the least significant bit (rightmost bit)
 Add each pair of bits
 Include the carry in the addition, if present

carry: 1

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 (4)

+ 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 (7)

0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 (11)
bit position: 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

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 Hexadecimal Addition
 Divide the sum of two digits by the number base (16). The quotient becomes
the carry value, and the remainder is the sum digit.

1 1
36 28 28 6A
42 45 58 4B
78 6D 80 B5

21 / 16 = 1, remainder 5

Important skill: Programmers frequently add and subtract the

addresses of variables and instructions.

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 Signed Integers
 Several ways to represent a signed number
 Sign-Magnitude
 1's complement
 2's complement
 Divide the range of values into 2 equal parts
 First part corresponds to the positive numbers (≥ 0)
 Second part correspond to the negative numbers (< 0)
 Focus will be on the 2's complement representation
 Has many advantages over other representations
 Used widely in processors to represent signed integers

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 Two's Complement Representation
 Positive numbers 8-bit Binary Unsigned Signed
value value value
 Signed value = Unsigned value
00000000 0 0
 Negative numbers 00000001 1 +1

 Signed value = Unsigned value - 2n 00000010 2 +2

... ... ...
 n = number of bits
01111110 126 +126
 Negative weight for MSB
01111111 127 +127
 Another way to obtain the signed
10000000 128 -128
value is to assign a negative weight
10000001 129 -127
to most-significant bit
... ... ...
1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0
11111110 254 -2
-128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
11111111 255 -1
= -128 + 32 + 16 + 4 = -76
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 Forming the Two's Complement
starting value 00100100 = +36
step1: reverse the bits (1's complement) 11011011
step 2: add 1 to the value from step 1 + 1
sum = 2's complement representation 11011100 = -36

Sum of an integer and its 2's complement must be zero:

00100100 + 11011100 = 00000000 (8-bit sum)  Ignore Carry

The easiest way to obtain the 2's complement of a

binary number is by starting at the LSB, leaving all the
0s unchanged, look for the first occurrence of a 1. Leave
this 1 unchanged and complement all the bits after it.

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 Sign Bit
Highest bit indicates the sign. 1 = negative, 0 = positive

If highest digit of a hexadecimal is > 7, the value is negative

Examples: 8A and C5 are negative bytes
A21F and 9D03 are negative words
B1C42A00 is a negative double-word
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 Sign Extension
Step 1: Move the number into the lower-significant bits
Step 2: Fill all the remaining higher bits with the sign bit
 This will ensure that both magnitude and sign are correct
 Examples
 Sign-Extend 10110011 to 16 bits
10110011 = -77 11111111 10110011 = -77
 Sign-Extend 01100010 to 16 bits
01100010 = +98 00000000 01100010 = +98

 Infinite 0s can be added to the left of a positive number

 Infinite 1s can be added to the left of a negative number

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 Two's Complement of a Hexadecimal
 To form the two's complement of a hexadecimal
 Subtract each hexadecimal digit from 15
 Add 1

 Examples:
 2's complement of 6A3D = 95C3
 2's complement of 92F0 = 6D10
 2's complement of FFFF = 0001

 No need to convert hexadecimal to binary

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 Two's Complement of a Hexadecimal
 Start at the least significant digit, leaving all the 0s
unchanged, look for the first occurrence of a non-zero
digit.
 Subtract this digit from 16.
 Then subtract all remaining digits from 15.
 Examples:
 2's complement of 6A3D = 95C3 F F F 16 F F 16
- 6A3 D - 92 F0
 2's complement of 92F0 = 6D10 -------------- --------------
95C3 6D10
 2's complement of FFFF = 0001

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 Binary Subtraction
 When subtracting A – B, convert B to its 2's complement
 Add A to (–B)
00001100 00001100
– +
00000010 11111110 (2's complement)

00001010 00001010 (same result)

 Carry is ignored, because

 Negative number is sign-extended with 1's
 You can imagine infinite 1's to the left of a negative number
 Adding the carry to the extended 1's produces extended zeros

Practice: Subtract 00100101 from 01101001.

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 Hexadecimal Subtraction
 When a borrow is required from the digit to the left,
add 16 (decimal) to the current digit's value

16 + 5 = 21

-1 11
C675 C675
- +
A247 5DB9 (2's complement)
242E 242E (same result)

 Last Carry is ignored

Practice: The address of var1 is 00400B20. The address of the
next variable after var1 is 0040A06C. How many bytes are used
by var1?

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 Ranges of Signed Integers
The unsigned range is divided into two signed ranges for positive
and negative numbers

Practice: What is the range of signed values that may be stored

in 20 bits?

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 Carry and Overflow
 Carry is important when …
 Adding or subtracting unsigned integers
 Indicates that the unsigned sum is out of range
 Either < 0 or > maximum unsigned n-bit value
 Overflow is important when …
 Adding or subtracting signed integers
 Indicates that the signed sum is out of range
 Overflow occurs when
 Adding two positive numbers and the sum is negative
 Adding two negative numbers and the sum is positive
 Can happen because of the fixed number of sum bits

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 Carry and Overflow Examples
 We can have carry without overflow and vice-versa
 Four cases are possible
1 1 1 1 1 1

0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 15 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 15
+ +
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 8 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 245 (-8)

0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 23 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 7

Carry = 0 Overflow = 0 Carry = 1 Overflow = 0

1 1 1 1

0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 79 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 218 (-38)
+ +
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 157 (-99)

1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 143 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 119
(-113)
Carry = 0 Overflow = 1 Carry = 1 Overflow = 1
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 Character Storage
 Character sets
 Standard ASCII: 7-bit character codes (0 – 127)
 Extended ASCII: 8-bit character codes (0 – 255)
 Unicode: 16-bit character codes (0 – 65,535)
 Unicode standard represents a universal character set
 Defines codes for characters used in all major languages
 Used in Windows-XP: each character is encoded as 16 bits
 UTF-8: variable-length encoding used in HTML
 Encodes all Unicode characters
 Uses 1 byte for ASCII, but multiple bytes for other characters

 Null-terminated String
 Array of characters followed by a NULL character
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 ASCII Codes

 Examples:
 ASCII code for space character = 20 (hex) = 32 (decimal)
 ASCII code for ‘A' = 41 (hex) = 65 (decimal)
 ASCII code for 'a' = 61 (hex) = 97 (decimal)
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 Control Characters
 The first 32 characters of ASCII table are used for control
 Control character codes = 00 to 1F (hex)
 Examples of Control Characters
 Character 0 is the NULL character  used to terminate a string
 Character 9 is the Horizontal Tab (HT) character
 Character 0A (hex) = 10 (decimal) is the Line Feed (LF)
 Character 0D (hex) = 13 (decimal) is the Carriage Return (CR)
 The LF and CR characters are used together
 They advance the cursor to the beginning of next line

 One control character appears at end of ASCII table

 Character 7F (hex) is the Delete (DEL) character

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 Parity Bit
 Data errors can occur during data transmission or
storage/retrieval.
 The 8th bit in the ASCII code is used for error checking.
 This bit is usually referred to as the parity bit.
 There are two ways for error checking:
 Even Parity: Where the 8th bit is set such that the total number
of 1s in the 8-bit code word is even.

 Odd Parity: The 8th bit is set such that the total number of 1s in
the 8-bit code word is odd.

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