KONGUNADU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

(AUTONOMOUS)
NAMAKKAL - TRICHY MAIN ROAD, THOTTIAM, TRICHY

INTRODUCTION TO NUMBER SYSTEMS

Number systems are the technique to represent numbers in the computer system
architecture, every value that you are saving or getting into/from computer
memory has a defined number system.
Computer architecture supports following number systems.
 Binary number system
 Octal number system
 Decimal number system
 Hexadecimal (hex) number system
BINARY NUMBER SYSTEM
A Binary number system has only two digits that are 0 and 1. Every number
(value) represents with 0 and 1 in this number system. The base of binary
number system is 2, because it has only two digits.
OCTAL NUMBER SYSTEM
Octal number system has only eight (8) digits from 0 to 7. Every number
(value) represents with 0,1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7 in this number system. The base of
octal number system is 8, because it has only 8 digits.
DECIMAL NUMBER SYSTEM
Decimal number system has only ten (10) digits from 0 to 9. Every number
(value) represents with 0,1,2,3,4,5,6, 7,8 and 9 in this number system. The base
of decimal number system is 10, because it has only 10 digits.
HEXADECIMAL NUMBER SYSTEM
A Hexadecimal number system has sixteen (16) alphanumeric values from 0 to
9 and A to F. Every number (value) represents with 0,1,2,3,4,5,6, 7,8,9, A, B, C,
D, E and F in this number system. The base of hexadecimal number system is
16, because it has 16 alphanumeric values. Here A is 10, B is 11, C is 12, D is
14, E is 15 and F is 16.
 KONGUNADU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
(AUTONOMOUS)
NAMAKKAL - TRICHY MAIN ROAD, THOTTIAM, TRICHY

Data Representation
Computer does not understand human language. Any data, viz., letters, symbols,
pictures, audio, videos, etc., fed to computer should be converted to machine
language first. Computers represent data in the following three forms –
 Number System
 Bits and Bytes
 Text Code
Bits and Bytes
Bits − A bit is a smallest possible unit of data that a computer can recognize or
use. Computer usually uses bits in groups.
Bytes − group of eight bits is called a byte. Half a byte is called a nibble.
 KONGUNADU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
(AUTONOMOUS)
NAMAKKAL - TRICHY MAIN ROAD, THOTTIAM, TRICHY

Text Code
Text code is format used commonly to represent alphabets, punctuation marks
and other symbols. Four most popular text code systems are −
 EBCDIC-
 ASCII
 Extended ASCII
 Unicode
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC):
It is an 8-bit code. It can represent 28 =256 characters. It is two groups of
4 digits. Each group represents a hexadecimal number, used as shortcut notation
for binary numbers.
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) Code:
ASCII-7: uses 7 bits and can represent 27 =128 characters. The first three bits
are used as zone bits and the last four bits indicate the digit. Hexadecimal
numbers are used as shortcut notation for memory dump.
ASCII-8: uses 8 bits and can represent 28 =256 characters. For all practical
purposes an 8-bit code is used.8th bit is added for parity. Characters are
assigned decimal values.
Unicode:
Unicode is a universal character encoding standard that assigns a code to every
character and symbol in every language in the world. Since no other encoding
standard supports all languages, Unicode is the only encoding standard that
ensures that you can retrieve or combine data using any combination of
languages.
Decimal Number System (Base 10)
In this number system, the digits 0 to 9 represents numbers. As it uses 10 digits
to represent a number, it is also called the base 10 number system. Each digit
has a value based on its position called place value. The value of the position
increases by 10 times as we move from right to left in the number.
For example,
the value of 786 is
= 7 x 102 + 8 x 101 + 6 x 100
= 700 + 80 + 6
Binary Number System (Base 2)
A computer can understand only the “on” and “off” state of a switch. These two
states are represented by 1 and 0. The combination of 1 and 0 form binary
numbers. These numbers represent various data. As two digits are used to
represent numbers, it is called a binary or base 2 number system.
 KONGUNADU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
(AUTONOMOUS)
NAMAKKAL - TRICHY MAIN ROAD, THOTTIAM, TRICHY

The binary number system uses positional notation. But in this case, each digit
is multiplied by the appropriate power of two based on its position.
For example,
(101101)2 in decimal is
= 1 x 25 + 0 x 24 + 1 x 23 + 1 x 22 + 0 x 21 + 1 x 20
= 1 x 32 + 0 x 16 + 1 x 8 + 1 x 4 + 0 x 2 + 1 x 1
= 32 + 8 + 4 + 1
= (45)10
CONVERSIONS:
DECIMAL TO OTHER
1. DECIMAL TO BINARY
Decimal Number System to Other Base
To convert Number system from Decimal Number System to Any Other Base is
quite easy; you have to follow just two steps:
A) Divide the Number (Decimal Number) by the base of target base system (in
which you want to convert the number: Binary (2), octal (8) and Hexadecimal
(16)).
B) Write the remainder from step 1 as a Least Signification Bit (LSB) to Step
last as a Most Significant Bit (MSB).
 KONGUNADU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
(AUTONOMOUS)
NAMAKKAL - TRICHY MAIN ROAD, THOTTIAM, TRICHY

2. DECIMAL TO OCTAL

3. DECIMAL TO HEXADECIMAL

BINARY TO OTHER
A) Multiply the digit with 2(with place value exponent). Eventually add all the multiplication
becomes the Decimal number.
1. BINARY TO DECIMAL
 KONGUNADU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
(AUTONOMOUS)
NAMAKKAL - TRICHY MAIN ROAD, THOTTIAM, TRICHY

2. BINARY TO OCTAL

3. BINARY TO HEXADECIMAL
An equally easy way to convert from binary to hexadecimal is to group binary digits into sets
of four, starting with the least significant (rightmost) digits.
Binary: 11100101 = 1110 0101
Then, look up each group in a table: