Computer Arithmetic Review

These flashcards cover basic concepts and definitions related to computer arithmetic, focusing on binary representation, 2's complement, BCD, and floating-point numbers.

2's complement

A method for representing positive and negative numbers in binary format.

Most Significant Bit (MSB)

The bit position in a binary number with the highest value; indicates sign in 2's complement.

8-bit number

A binary number representation using 8 bits, can encode values from 0 to 255.

Binary Coded Decimal (BCD)

A form of representation where each decimal digit is represented by its own binary sequence.

Normalized form

A way to express numbers so that there is only one non-zero digit before the binary point.

Mantissa

The part of a floating-point number that contains its significant digits.

Exponent

The component of a floating-point number that indicates the power of 2 by which the mantissa is multiplied.

Overflow Error

An error that occurs when a calculation exceeds the maximum value that can be represented with a fixed number of bits.

Bias in exponent storage

A technique used to represent negative exponents by adding a fixed value to it, thereby shifting the range.

Complementing bits

The process of flipping each bit (0 becomes 1 and 1 becomes 0) in binary to find the 2's complement.