Computer Organization and Number Systems

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering number systems, character encoding, hardware architecture, and assembly language concepts based on the lecture notes.

Number System

The technique to represent and work with numbers.

Base

The number of unique digits or symbols used in a number system.

LSB (Least Significant Bit)

The rightmost digit in any binary number.

MSB (Most Significant Bit)

The leftmost digit in any binary number.

Binary Positional Value

A system where each digit has a value expressed in powers of 2.

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange; a 7-bit code that has 128 ($2^{7}$) possible codes.

ISCII

Indian Script Code for Information Interchange; a code developed to support Indian languages on computers.

Unicode

An international coding system designed to provide a unique number for every character regardless of platform, program, or language.

Byte

A unit of storage consisting of 8 bits.

Bitmap Image

An image divided into many small picture elements (pixels), with the appearance of each pixel encoded in binary form.

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) Compression

A method that reduces the size of a bitmap file by limiting the number of colours to 256.

IEEE 754

The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic established in 1985.

Mantissa

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

Biased Exponent

A component of floating-point representation where a bias is added to the actual exponent to get the stored exponent.

Normalisation

The representation of the mantissa with only one 1 to the left of the decimal point.

NaN (Not a Number)

A value representing an error, characterized by an exponent field of all ones and a nonzero mantissa.

Computer Organization

The physical aspects of computer systems, such as circuit design, control signals, and memory types.

Computer Architecture

The logical aspects of system implementation as seen by the programmer, including instruction sets and data types.

Principle of Equivalence of Hardware and Software

Any task done by software can also be done using hardware, and any operation performed directly by hardware can be done using software.

Arithmetic-Logic Unit (ALU)

The part of the CPU where all arithmetic and logic operations and manipulation of numbers take place.

Control Unit (CU)

The nerve center of a computer that controls and coordinates the order and execution of program instructions.

Hertz

A unit measuring clock cycles per second (frequency).

Von Neumann Architecture

A foundational design for modern computers that stores both data and instructions in the same memory.

Program Counter (PC)

A CPU register that keeps track of the address of the next instruction to be executed.

Instruction Register (IR)

A register that holds the current instruction being executed.

Von Neumann Bottleneck

A limitation caused by the shared single data path between the CPU and memory, resulting in sequential instruction execution.

Moore’s Law

The observation that the density of transistors in an integrated circuit will double every year (or every 18 months per contemporary interpretations).

Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) Level

Also known as Level 2: Machine Level; it consists of instructions particular to the machine's architecture.

DEBUG

A line-oriented debugger that can act as an assembler, disassembler, or hex dump program.

AX (Accumulator)

The primary accumulator register used in input/output and most arithmetic instructions.

CX (Count Register)

A register used to store the loop count in iterative operations.

Instruction Pointer (IP)

A 16-bit register that stores the offset address of the next instruction to be executed.

Zero Flag (ZF)

A flag that indicates the result of an arithmetic or comparison operation was zero.

MOV

An assembly instruction that copies and transfers data between two registers or from immediate data to a register.

LOOP

An assembly instruction that controls segment execution a specified number of times using the CX register as a counter.