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Number System
Introduction

Number systems provide the basis for all operations in information processing systems. In a
number system the information is divided into a group of symbols; for example, 26 English
letters, 10 decimal digits etc. In conventional arithmetic, a number system based upon ten units
(0 to 9) is used. However, arithmetic and logic circuits used in computers and other digital
systems operate with only 0's and 1's because it is very difficult to design circuits that require ten
distinct states. The number system with the basic symbols 0 and 1 is called binary. ie. A binary
system uses just two discrete values. The binary digit (either 0 or 1) is called a bit.

A group of bits which is used to represent the discrete elements of information is a symbol. The
mapping of symbols to a binary value is known a binary code. This mapping must be unique. For
example, the decimal digits 0 through 9 are represented in a digital system with a code of four
bits. Thus a digital system is a system that manipulates discrete elements of information that is
represented internally in binary form.

Decimal Numbers

The invention of decimal number system has been the most important factor in the development
of science and technology. The decimal number system uses positional number representation,
which means that the value of each digit is determined by its position in a number.

The base, also called the radix of a number system is the number of symbols that the system
contains. The decimal system has ten symbols: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. In other words, it has a base
of 10. Each position in the decimal system is 10 times more significant than the previous
position. The numeric value of a decimal number is determined by multiplying each digit of the
number by the value of the position in which the digit appears and then adding the products.
Thus the number 2734 is interpreted as

Here 4 is the least significant digit (LSD) and 2 is the most significant digit (MSD).

In general in a number system with a base or radix r, the digits used are from 0 to r-1 and the
number can be represented as

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Equation (1) is for all integers and for the fractions (numbers between 0 and 1), the following
equation holds.

Thus for decimal fraction 0.7123

Binary Numbers

The binary number has a radix of 2. As r = 2, only two digits are needed, and these are 0 and 1.
Like the decimal system, binary is a positional system, except that each bit position corresponds
to a power of 2 instead of a power of 10. In digital systems, the binary number system and other
number systems closely related to it are used almost exclusively. Hence, digital systems often
provide conversion between decimal and binary numbers. The decimal value of a binary number
can be formed by multiplying each power of 2 by either 1 or 0 followed by adding the values
together.

Example: The decimal equivalent of the binary number 101010.

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In binary r bits can represent symbols. e.g. 3 bits can represent up to 8 symbols, 4 bits for
16 symbols etc. For N symbols to be represented, the minimum number of bits required is the
lowest integer 'r'' that satisfies the relationship.

E.g. if N = 26, minimum r is 5 since .

Octal Numbers

Digital systems operate only on binary numbers. Since binary numbers are often very long, two
shorthand notations, octal and hexadecimal, are used for representing large binary numbers.
Octal systems use a base or radix of 8. Thus it has digits from 0 to 7 (r-1). As in the decimal and
binary systems, the positional valued of each digit in a sequence of numbers is fixed. Each
position in an octal number is a power of 8, and each position is 8 times more significant than the
previous position.

Example: The decimal equivalent of the octal number 15.2.

Hexadecimal Numbers

The hexadecimal numbering system has a base of 16. There are 16 symbols. The decimal digits 0
to 9 are used as the first ten digits as in the decimal system, followed by the letters A, B, C, D, E
and F, which represent the values 10, 11,12,13,14 and 15 respectively. Table 1 shows the
relationship between decimal, binary, octal and hexadecimal number systems.

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Decimal Binary Octal Hexadecimal

0 0000 0 0
1 0001 1 1
2 0010 2 2
3 0011 3 3
4 0100 4 4
5 0101 5 5
6 0110 6 6
7 0111 7 7
8 1000 10 8
9 1001 11 9
10 1010 12 A
11 1011 13 B
12 1100 14 C
13 1101 15 D
14 1110 16 E
15 1111 17 F

Hexadecimal numbers are often used in describing the data in computer memory. A computer
memory stores a large number of words, each of which is a standard size collection of bits. An 8-
bit word is known as a Byte. A hexadecimal digit may be considered as half of a byte. Two
hexadecimal digits constitute one byte, the rightmost 4 bits corresponding to half a byte, and the
leftmost 4 bits corresponding to the other half of the byte. Often a half-byte is called nibble.

If "word" size is n bits there are 2n possible bit patterns so only 2n possible distinct numbers can
be represented. It implies that all possible numbers cannot be represent and some of these bit
patterns (half?) to represent negative numbers. The negative numbers are generally represented
with sign magnitude i.e. reserve one bit for the sign and the rest of bits are interpreted directly as
the number. For example in a 4 bit system, 0000 to 0111 can be used to positive numbers from
+0 to +2n-1 and represent 1000 to 1111 can be used for negative numbers from -0 to -2n-1. The
two possible zero's redundant and also it can be seen that such representations are arithmetically
costly.

Another way to represent negative numbers are by radix and radix-1 complement (also called r's
and (r-1)'s). For example -k is represented as Rn -k. In the case of base 10 and corresponding 10's
complement with n=2, 0 to 99 are the possible numbers. In such a system, 0 to 49 is reserved for
positive numbers and 50 to 99 are for positive numbers.

Examples:

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+3 = +3
-3 = 10 2 -3 = 97

2's complement is a special case of complement representation. The negative number -k is equal
to 2 n -k. In 4 bits system, positive numbers 0 to 2n-1 is represented by 0000 to 0111 and negative
numbers -2n-1 to -1 is represented by 1000 to 1111. Such a representation has only one zero and
arithmetic is easier. To negate a number complement all bits and add 1

Example:

119 10 = 01110111 2

Complementing bits will result

10001000
+1 add 1
10001001
That is 10001001 2 = - 119 10

Properties of Two's Complement Numbers

1. X plus the complement of X equals 0.

2. There is one unique 0.
3. Positive numbers have 0 as their leading bit (MSB); while negatives have 1 as their
MSB.
4. The range for an n-bit binary number in 2's complement representation is from -2 (n-1) to
2 (n-1) - 1
5. The complement of the complement of a number is the original number.
6. Subtraction is done by addition to the 2's complement of the number.

Value of Two's Complement Numbers

For an n-bit 2's complement number the weights of the bits is the same as for unsigned numbers
except of the MSB. For the MSB or sign bit, the weight is -2 n-1. The value of the n-bit 2's
complement number is given by:

A 2's-complement = (a n-1) x (-2 n-1) + (a n-2 ) x (2 n-1 ) + ... (a 1 ) x (2 1 ) + a 0

For example, the value of the 4-bit 2's complement number 1011 is given by:

= 1 x -2 3 + 0 x 2 2 + 1 x 2 1 + 1
= -8 + 0 + 2 + 1
= -5

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An n-bit 2's complement number can converted to an m-bit number where m>n by appending m-
n copies of the sign bit to the left of the number. This process is called sign extension. Example:
To convert the 4-bit 2's complement number 1011 to an 8-bit representation, the sign bit (here =
1) must be extended by appending four 1's to left of the number:

1011 4-bit 2's-complement = 11111011 8-bit 2's-complement

To verify that the value of the 8-bit number is still -5; value of 8-bit number

= -27 + 26 + 25 + 24 + 23 +2 +1

= -128 + 64 + 32 + 16 +8 +2+1

= -128 + 123 = -5

Similar to decimal number addition, two binary numbers are added by adding each pair of bits
together with carry propagation. An addition example is illustrated below:

X 190
Y 141
X + Y 331

Similar to addition, two binary numbers are subtracted by subtracting each pair of bits together
with borrowing, where needed. For example:

X 229
Y 46
X-Y 183

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Two' complement addition/subtraction example

Overflow occurs if signs (MSBs) of both operands are the same and the sign of the result is
different. Overflow can also be detected if the carry in the sign position is different from the
carry out of the sign position. Ignore carry out from MSB.