Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An 8-bit register can store 2 8 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 8 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 255 (2 8 − 1) for representation as an binary number, and −128 (−1 × 2 7) through 127 (2 7 − 1) for representation as two's complement.
The value of an item with an integral type is the mathematical integer that it corresponds to. Integral types may be unsigned (capable of representing only non-negative integers) or signed (capable of representing negative integers as well).
This can also be thought of as the most significant bit representing the inverse of its value in an unsigned integer; in an 8-bit unsigned byte, the most significant bit represents the 128ths place, where in two's complement that bit would represent −128. In two's-complement, there is only one zero, represented as 00000000.
For Integers, the unsigned modifier defines the type to be unsigned. The default integer signedness outside bit-fields is signed, but can be set explicitly with signed modifier. By contrast, the C standard declares signed char, unsigned char, and char, to be three distinct types, but specifies that all three must have the same size and alignment.
For unsigned integers, the bitwise complement of a number is the "mirror reflection" of the number across the half-way point of the unsigned integer's range. For example, for 8-bit unsigned integers, NOT x = 255 - x, which can be visualized on a graph as a downward line that effectively "flips" an increasing range from 0 to 255, to a decreasing ...
In multiplication of two unsigned integers with m and n bits, the result may have m+n bits. In case of overflow, the high-order bits are usually lost, as the un-scaled integer gets reduced modulo 2 n where n is the size of the storage area. The sign bit, in particular, is lost, which may radically change the sign and the magnitude of the value.
The relation between numbers and bit patterns is chosen for convenience in computer manipulation; eight bytes stored in computer memory may represent a 64-bit real, two 32-bit reals, or four signed or unsigned integers, or some other kind of data that fits into eight bytes. The only difference is how the computer interprets them.
That is, a 16-bit signed (two's complement) integer, that is implicitly multiplied by the scaling factor 2 −12. In particular, when n is zero, the numbers are just integers. If m is zero, all bits except the sign bit are fraction bits; then the range of the stored number is from −1.0 (inclusive) to +1.0 (exclusive).