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The base-2 numeral system is a positional notation with a radix of 2.Each digit is referred to as a bit, or binary digit.Because of its straightforward implementation in digital electronic circuitry using logic gates, the binary system is used by almost all modern computers and computer-based devices, as a preferred system of use, over various other human techniques of communication, because ...
A bitwise AND is a binary operation that takes two equal-length binary representations and performs the logical AND operation on each pair of the corresponding bits. Thus, if both bits in the compared position are 1, the bit in the resulting binary representation is 1 (1 × 1 = 1); otherwise, the result is 0 (1 × 0 = 0 and 0 × 0 = 0).
This bit numbering method has the advantage that for any unsigned number the value of the number can be calculated by using exponentiation with the bit number and a base of 2. [2] The value of an unsigned binary integer is therefore =
Two's complement is the most common method of representing signed (positive, negative, and zero) integers on computers, [1] and more generally, fixed point binary values. Two's complement uses the binary digit with the greatest value as the sign to indicate whether the binary number is positive or negative; when the most significant bit is 1 the number is signed as negative and when the most ...
However, a binary number system with base −2 is also possible. The rightmost bit represents (−2) 0 = +1, the next bit represents (−2) 1 = −2, the next bit (−2) 2 = +4 and so on, with alternating sign. The numbers that can be represented with four bits are shown in the comparison table below.
Computer engineers often need to write out binary quantities, but in practice writing out a binary number such as 1001001101010001 is tedious and prone to errors. Therefore, binary quantities are written in a base-8, or "octal", or, much more commonly, a base-16, "hexadecimal" (hex), number format. In the decimal system, there are 10 digits, 0 ...
Shifting left by n bits on a signed or unsigned binary number has the effect of multiplying it by 2 n. Shifting right by n bits on a two's complement signed binary number has the effect of dividing it by 2 n, but it always rounds down (towards negative infinity). This is different from the way rounding is usually done in signed integer division ...
If the source of the operation is an unsigned number, then zero extension is usually the correct way to move it to a larger field while preserving its numeric value, while sign extension is correct for signed numbers. In the x86 and x64 instruction sets, the movzx instruction ("move with zero extension") performs this function.