COS 101 Introduction to Computing Sciences.

Lecture 1: Data storage: data representation, data storage, types of data store in a computer.

Hamisu Ismail AHMAD

Nile University of Nigeria, Abuja
Faculty of Computing Department of Cyber Security.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid

Bit and their storage

 First, we must consider how information can be stored inside

computers. By “information” we mean the following
 Numbers
 Text and
 Images
 Sound
 Video, etc.
 For today’s computers, information is encoded as
patterns of 0’s and 1’s called bits (short for binary digits).
 The reason we use only two symbols (0 and 1) for
information encoding is because it’s simple, not because
it’s powerful.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 2

Data Representation

 Some possible meanings for a single bit

 Numeric value (1 or 0)
 Boolean (true or false)
 A bit can only represent one of two values, for more
values, we need a long string of bits to represent
them 010100101

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 3

Boolean operations

 Operations that manipulate one or more 1/0 (or true/false)

values are called Boolean operations, in honor of
Mathematician George Boole (1815-1864).

 The four Boolean operations are

 AND
 OR
 XOR (exclusive or)
 NOT
 They are like arithmetic operators (+,-) because they combine a
pair of value to produce a result

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 4

Boolean operations

 AND result is true (1) when both of its component are true,
we conclude 1 AND 1 should be 1, where as all other cases
should produce an output of 0.
 OR result is true (1) when at least one its component is true,
other cases should produce an output of 0.
 XOR result is true (1) when its component are not the same.
 NOT it compute only one input, if its input is true (1) the
output should be false (0), otherwise if its false (0) the output
will be true (1).

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 5

Example of Boolean operations

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 6

 Gates

 A device that produces the output

of a Boolean operation when given
the operation's input values is
called a gate
 Inside today's computers, gates are
usually implemented as small
electronic circuits in which the
digits 0 and 1 are represented as
voltage levels

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 7

Gate example

 A digital circuit’s operation can be summarized by a truth table

0 1

1 0
0

0
0

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 8

Flip-flop
A flip-flop is a circuit that produces an output value of 0 or 1, which
remains constant until a temporary pulse from another circuit causes
it to shift to the other value. Our purpose in introducing the flip-flop
it demonstrates how devices can be constructed from gates, a
process known as digital circuit design, which is an important topic in
computer engineering

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 9

Another way of constructing flip-flop

Reasons for introducing Flip-flop

 Construction device using gate
 Provide example of abstraction
 Alternative way of storing bits

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 10

Hexadecimal Notation

 A long string (101101010011 ) of bits is called stream.

 Stream are difficult for the human mind to comprehend.
Therefore, the representation of such bit pattern is
represented in short notation called hexadecimal notation.
 Hexadecimal notation takes advantage of the fact that bit
patterns within a machine tend to have lengths in multiples
of four.
 Example
 101101010011. can be divided into the following:
1011 0101 0011

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 11

Hexadecimal encoding system

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 12

 Main memory

 A computer contains a large collection of circuits (such as flip-flops),

each capable of storing a single bit. This bit reservoir is known as the
machine's main memory.
 Memory structure: Information is store in manageable units called a
cell, each cell has a capacity of 8 bits which is equivalent to 1 byte.
 Computers with small memory capacity may have a main
memories consisting of a few hundred cells, whereas computers
with large memory capacity may have billions of cells in their
main memories.

 Memory cell are arrangement in form of a row

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 13

 Main memory
 How to identify individual cells in a computer main memory?
 Assigning a unique address to every cell

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 14

 Main memory
 How can we access the content of memory cell?
 Read operation
 Write operation
 the circuitry that actually holds the bits is combined with the
circuitry required to allow other circuits to store and retrieve
data from the memory cells. In this way, other circuits can get
data from the memory by electronically asking for the contents
of a certain address (called a read operation), or they can record
information in the memory by requesting that a certain bit
pattern be placed in the cell at a particular address (called a
write operation).

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 15

 Main memory
 Why computer main memory is often called random access memory
(RAM)?
 Why some computers are faster than others?
 Refresh circuit
 Computers memory constructed from such technology is
often called dynamic memory (DRAM) or Synchronous DRAM
(SDRAM).

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 16

 Unit of measuring memory capacity
Unit & Description
 Bit (Binary digit)
 A binary digit is logical 0 and 1
representing a passive or an active state
of a component in an electric circuit.
 Nibble
 A group of 4 bits is called nibble.
 Byte
 A group of 8 bits is called byte

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 17

Mass Storage
 Due to the limited storage capacity of main memory most
computers have additional memory capacity called a mass
storage (or secondary storage) such as the following:
 Magnetic disks
 CDs
 DVDs
 Flash drives, etc.
 Advantage and disadvantage of mass storage?
Flexibility Motion
 Terminologies used for differentiating the memory; on-line and
off-line

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 18

Disk storage system

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 19

Mass storage system

Back in 1956, disk storage are huge

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 20

Flash drive

Flash memory technology has the potential of alleviating drawback of

magnetic and optic technology storage that required physical motion. In a
flash memory system, bits are stored by sending electronic signals
directly to the storage medium where they cause electrons to be trapped
in tiny chambers of silicon dioxide, thus altering the characteristics of
small electronic circuits. Since these chambers are able to hold their
captive electrons for many years, this technology is suitable for off-line
storage of data.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 21

Representing information as bit patterns

 Text
 Numerical data
 Images
 Sound

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 22

Representing text

 Is represented by a code which is assigning a unique bit pattern to

each character in a text. The text is then represented in a long
string of bit.
 Back in 1940s and 1950s there are several code that lead to
communication problems. To overcome this situation the
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
 This code uses bit pattern of 7 length for upper, lowercase
letters, tab, line break. Later extended to 8 bit pattern per
symbol by adding a 0 at most significant end of each of
the 7 bit pattern.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 23

Representing numeric value

 Number are encoded into bit 0 and 1 each digit in a group of 4 bit
pattern.

# Bit
0 0000
1 0001
2 0010
3 0011
4 0100
5 0101
6 0110
7 0111
8 1000
9 1111 More precise later

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 24

Representing images

 Image is represented as a collection of dot which called pixel, short

for picture element.
 A black and white image is encoded as a long string of bits
representing the rows of pixels in the image, where each bit is
either 1 or 0 depending on whether the corresponding pixel is
black or white. This is the approach used by many machines.
 Color images; RGB encoding is use

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 25

Representing sound (1)
The most generic method of encoding audio information for computer
storage and manipulation is to sample the amplitude of the sound
wave at regular intervals and record the series of values obtained. For
instance, the series 0, 1.5, 2.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 3.0, 0 would
represent a sound wave that rises in amplitude, falls briefly, rises to a
higher level, and then drops back to 0.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 26

Binary notation

In previous slide, we saw that binary notation is a means of

representing numeric values using only the digits 0 and 1 rather than
the ten digits 0 through 9 that are used in the more common base ten
notational system.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 27

Conversion from radix 2 to radix 10

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 28

Conversion from radix 10 to radix 2

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 29

 Binary arithmetic

 Modern computers usually use binary representation

of numerical data, therefore, numerical calculations
must be done in radix-2 as well
 Binary calculation is similar to radix 10 calculation where you
add some number and take a reminder depending on the
position of the number. Let look at the following examples.

(a) (b)

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 30

Binary representation of fraction

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 31

 Representing integers

 The process of representing integer (i.e positive and negative)

in todays’ computer is called twos’ complement

0111

1000
+1

1001

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 32

Method for twos’ complement representation
We merely copy the original pattern from right to left until a 1 has
been copied, then we complement the remaining bits as they are
transferred to the final bit pattern

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 33

Method for twos’ complement representation

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 34

Summary

 Information representation in computer and some operation on

them.
 Text
 Images
 Sound
 Numeric
 Memory of computer
 Main memory
 Mass storage (secondary storage)
 Measure of memory capacity

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 35

Glimpse of next class

 Computer architecture
 The CPU basics
 ALU
 Control unit
 Register unit
 Machine instruction
 Data transfer
 ALU
 Control

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 36

Lecture 01 ends

Question??

Thank you for coming.

© Asim Balarabe Yazid 37