Chapter 1:

Data Storage

Computer Science: An Overview

Tenth Edition

by
J. Glenn Brookshear

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

 What’s on the Motherboard?

 The motherboard is the printed

circuit board that contains thousands
of electrical circuits, it provides the
centralized connection point for the
computer’s components.
 The majority of parts found on the
motherboard are integrated circuits.
 An integrated circuit (or chip) includes
millions of transistors and carries electrical
current.
 A transistor is a switch that is able to
control the electrical signal flow to the
circuit. 2
 How Computers
Represent Data
 Computers only have two possible states by
which to represent data - high or low power
circuit.
 The base-2 system or binary numbers is a
perfect system for computers, it allows
computers to be built with current technology
 0 = low power circuit (off)
 1 = high power circuit (on)

3
Binary Number
(base 2)
Decimal Number
(base 10) How Computers
0
1
0
1
Represent Data
10 2
11 3
100 4 Computers work with
101 5
110 6
binary numbers,
111 7 which include only
1000 8 0s and 1s.
1001 9
1010 10
1011 11
1100 12
1101 13
1110 14
1111 15
 How Computers
Represent Data
 Binary numbers : Computers work with binary
numbers, which include only 0s and 1s.
 Bit : is the smallest piece of data (or unit of
information) a computer can work with
OFF ON
OFF
ON
A bit is either “on”
OR = 1 bit
or “off,” a 0 or a 1.
0 1
 Eight bits, a Byte, signify a single unit of storage.
1 Byte = 8 bits = 1 Byte
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
5
How Computers
Represent Data
Bits

Bytes
8 bits = 1 Byte
one thousand Bytes = 1 Kilobyte (KB)
one million Bytes = 1 Megabyte (MB)
one billion Bytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)
6
one trillion Bytes = 1 Terabyte (TB)
 How Computers
Represent Data
 The common measurement of a data
transfer rate is in bits per second,
Example: gigabits per second (Gbps).
 The common measurement of data
storage is in bytes, such as gigabytes
(GB).

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 7

Numbers with Different Bases
Binary Number Decimal Number
(base 2) (base 10)
0 0
1 1
10 2
11 3
100 4
101 5
110 6
111 7
1000 8
1001 9
1010 10
1011 11
1100 12
1101 13
1110 14
1111 15
 The Bits

• The word bit is a shortening of the words

"Binary digIT." Whereas decimal digits
have 10 possible values ranging from 0 to
9, bits have only two possible values: 0
and 1. Therefore, a binary number is
composed of only 0s and 1s, like this: 1011

1-9

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

 Bits and Bit Patterns

• Bit: Binary Digit (0 or 1)

• Bit Patterns are used to represent information.
– Numbers
– Text characters
– Images
– Sound
– And others

1-10

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-10

 Bytes
• It often designates a sequence of bits
(binary digits) whose length is eight bits.
• With 8 bits in a byte, you can represent
256 values ranging from 0 to 255, as
shown here:
• 0 = 00000000
1 = 00000001
...
254 = 11111110
255 = 11111111 1-11

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-11

 Decimal Numbers

The easiest way to understand bits is to compare

them to something you know: digits. A digit is a
single place that can hold numerical values
between 0 and 9. Digits are normally combined
together in groups to create larger numbers. For
example, 357 has three digits. It is understood
that in the number, the 7 is filling the "1s place,"
while the 5 is filling the 10s place, the 3 is filling
the 100s. So you could express things this way if
you wanted to be explicit:
• (3 * 100) + (5 * 10) + (7 * 1) = 300 + 50 + 7 = 357 1-12
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 The Binary System

The traditional decimal system is based

on powers of ten.

The Binary system is based on powers

of two.

1-13

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-13

 Figure 1.15 The base ten and binary
systems

1-14

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-14

 Figure 1.17 An algorithm for finding the
binary representation of a positive integer

1-15

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-15

 Figure 1.18 Applying the algorithm in
Figure 1.15 to obtain the binary
representation of thirteen

1-16

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-16

 Figure 1.16 Decoding the binary
representation 100101

1-17

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-17

 Binary Addition

1-18

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-18

 Figure 1.19 The binary addition facts

11 (carry)
1010
1111+
11001

1-19

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-19

 Hexadecimal Notation

• Hexadecimal notation: A shorthand

notation for long bit patterns
– Divides a pattern into groups of four bits each
– Represents each group by a single symbol
• Example: 10100011 becomes A3

1-20

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-20

 Figure 1.6 The hexadecimal coding
system

1-21

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-21

 Storing Integers

• Two’s complement notation: The most

popular means of representing integer
values
• Excess notation: Another means of
representing integer values
• Both can suffer from overflow errors.

1-22

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-22

 Figure 1.21 Two’s complement
notation systems

1-23

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-23

 Figure 1.22 Coding the value -6 in two’s
complement notation using four bits

1-24

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-24

 Representing Text

• Each character (letter, punctuation, etc.) is

assigned a unique bit pattern.
– ASCII: Uses patterns of 7-bits to represent
most symbols used in written English text
– Unicode: Uses patterns of 16-bits to represent
the major symbols used in languages world
side
– ISO standard: Uses patterns of 32-bits to
represent most symbols used in languages
world wide

1-25

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-25

 Figure 1.13 The message “Hello.” in
ASCII

1-26

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley 1-26

 How Computers Represent
Data - Character codes
• Binary numbers are useful for computers but are almost
unreadable by humans
• Character codes convert human readable characters
(letters, numbers, and symbols) into the binary
numbers(held in RAM) that the CPU can
understand( process).
• Three main types of character coding are:
1. American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII);
(pronounced “ask-ee”).
2. Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC)
3. Universal code(Unicode)
1-27
27
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Character codes

• ASCII: Acronym for the American Standard Code for

Information Interchange. Pronounced ask-ee, ASCII is a
code for representing English characters as numbers,
with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. For
example, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77. Most
computers use ASCII codes to represent text, which
makes it possible to transfer data from one computer to
another. It uses 8 bits for each character encoding.

1-28
28
Copyright © 2011 Pearson
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Education, Inc. Publishing as
Prentice Hall
 Character codes

• EBCDIC :Abbreviation of Extended Binary-Coded

Decimal Interchange Code. Pronounced eb-sih-dik,
EBCDIC is an IBM code for representing characters as
numbers. It is widely used on large IBM computers and
mainframes; most other computers, including PCs and
Macintoshes, use ASCII codes. It uses 8 bits for each
character encoding.

1-29
29
Copyright © 2011 Pearson
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Education, Inc. Publishing as
Prentice Hall
 Character codes

• Unicode is a standard for the consistent encoding,

representation and handling of text expressed in most of
the world's writing systems. The latest version of Unicode
consists of a repertoire of more than 110,000 charaters.
It uses 8/16 bits for each character encoding.

1-30
30
Copyright © 2011 Pearson
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley Education, Inc. Publishing as
Prentice Hall
 ASCII and EBCDIC Code

1-31
31
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Example : Binary encoding using ASCII Code

DOG= 01000100 01001111 01000111

CAT= 01000011 01000001 01010100

1-32
32
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley