CMPF134

Chapter 6 – Computer Encoding System

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 Chapter Objectives
◦ To be exposed to five common types of computer
encoding system
◦ To be able to differentiate the characteristics of each
computer encoding system
◦ To be able to convert from BCD to Binary Number
◦ To be able to convert from Gray Code to Binary Number

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 Introduction
◦ Computer is a very useful digital device, whereby it assists human
being in performing lots of complicated tasks (example: calculating
monthly expenses, generating assignment report)
◦ Apart from numerical values, computing devices also handle textual
data comprising characters. The character set includes letters in
alphabets (a-z, A-Z), digits (0-9), special symbols (+ - ! %.....) and
non-printable characters (example: backspace)
◦ As mentioned in earlier chapter, a computer can only understand
two distinct types of data: on (1) and off (0) – binary numbers
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 Introduction (Cont.)
◦ A computer is a collection of on/off switches (transistor) located in
the CPU. At a physical level, the 0s and 1s are stored in the central
processing unit of a computer system using transistors
◦ Binary information is also transmitted using magnetic properties;
the two different types of polarities are used to represent zeros and
ones (so that data can be saved inside a magnetic storage media)
◦ No matter where the data is stored, all digital data (either numbers
or characters) must be represented at the most fundamental level --
binary numbers, consists of zeros and ones

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 Introduction (Cont.)
◦ You have learnt how to convert numbers into their binary
equivalent in chapter 1 and 2
◦ The problem is, how do we represent texts (such as “Hello!!”) in
binary forms so that it can be processed by the computer?
◦ The same logic used to represent numbers can be used to represent
text

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 Introduction (Cont.)
◦ By the late 1950s, computers were getting more common, and they
started to communicate with each others
◦ There was a pressing need for a standard way to represent textual
data, so that it could be understood by different models and brands
of computers during data transmission
◦ It can be accomplished with the existence of computer encoding
system

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Types of Computer Encoding System
◦Five common types of computer encoding system are:
ASCII
Unicode
EBCDIC
BCD
Gray Code

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 ASCII
◦ Stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange
◦ Published in 1960s by ANSI (American National Standard Institute)
◦ One of the earliest character coding scheme, developed from
telegraphic codes
◦ Most widely used coding scheme for personal computers (except
IBM Mainframe Computers)

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 ASCII (Cont.)
◦ It was originally designed as a 7-bit code
 Can represent 27 = 128 characters
 8th bit will act as the parity bit (also called a check bit) to make sure
that data are transmitted correctly from sending device to receiving
device
◦ It has then been extended to 8-bit code to better utilize the 8-bit
computer memory organization
 Can represent 28 = 256 characters
 Extended 128 unique codes are used to represent graphic symbols
 Requires a ninth bit for parity checking
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 ASCII (Cont.)
◦ ASCII characters can be split into the following sections by referring
to their ASCII decimal value:
0 – 31: Control characters
32 – 127 : Standard alphanumeric characters we work with everyday
128 – 255 : Special symbols, non-standard characters (extended ASCII
characters)

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11
ASCII - Control Characters (Cont.)

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13
ASCII – Standard Characters (Cont.)

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ASCII – Standard Characters (Cont.)

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16
ASCII – Extended Characters (Cont.)

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 Unicode
◦ Computers are largely invented in English-speaking countries
(Britain and US). However, there is a whole world out there (Japan,
Korea, China, India etc) and they are also digitalized now
◦ This raises a problem with current ASCII encoding system as it is
not sufficient to represent alphabets of other languages
◦ Therefore, Unification Code (or Unicode) has been introduced in
1980s to unify all of the worlds’ character sets into a single large
character set, known as Universal Character Set (UCS)
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 Unicode (Cont.)
◦ Developed and maintained by a non-profit organization, called the
Unicode ® Consortium
◦ Started out by using 16-bit (2-Byte) code, therefore it is also called
UCS - 2 (Universal Character Set – 2 Bytes)
◦ Allows more than 65, 000 distinct characters (216 combinations ) to
be represented
◦ It is backward compatible with the 7-bit ASCII which makes the first
128 characters in Unicode to be the same as ASCII

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 Unicode (Cont.)
◦ Has three encoding forms: UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32
◦ It has been adopted by many industries, such as Apple, HP, IBM,
Microsoft, Oracle… etc.
◦ It is capable to support many operating systems and web browser
◦ Besides that, it works on any computer language, platforms and
programs

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 Unicode (Cont.)
◦ The Universal Character Set is coded in terms of integer values, which are
referred to as Unicode Scalar Values (USVs)
◦ Unicode code points are represented in hexadecimal notation with a
minimum four digits and preceded with “U+”
◦ Example:
U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A
 U+0061  code point
 0061  USV
 LATIN SMALL LETTER A  name of character, written entirely in uppercase
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 Unicode (Cont.)
◦ In the original design of Unicode, all
characters were to have code points
in the range of U+0000 to U+FFFF

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 EBCDIC
◦ Stands for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code
◦ First used on the IBM 360 computers, which was presented to the
market in 1980s
◦ Generally found on IBM mainframe computers or in systems which
interact with them
◦ Expanded from IBM 6-bit code, known as BCDIC (Binary Coded
Decimal Interchange Code)
◦ Represents character by using 8-bit code, it is possible to form 256
different bits combinations (hence, can represent 256 different
characters) 23
 EBCDIC (Cont.)
◦ EBCDIC code is shown in “zone-digit” form
◦ The first nibble (four bits) is called the zone which represents the
category of the character, while the last nibble is called the digit and it
identifies the specific character.
◦ Example (refer to EBCDIC table 1):
Zone bits 1100 is used for alphabetic characters A – I
Zone bits 1101 is used for characters J – R
Zone bits 1110 is used for character S – Z
Zone bits 1111 is used to represent decimal digits
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EBCDIC Table (1)

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EBCDIC Table (1) (Cont.)

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 EBCDIC (Cont.)
◦ EBCDIC characters set consists of four main blocks (refer to EBCDIC
table 2):
0000 0000 to 0011 1111 – control characters (wider range of control
characters than ASCII)
0100 0000 to 0111 1111 – punctuation marks
1000 0000 to 1011 1111 – lowercase characters
1100 0000 to 1111 1111 – uppercase characters and numbers

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EBCDIC Table (2)

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 EBCDIC (Cont.)
◦ Even though both EBCDIC and ASCII encoding system represent
characters by using 8-bits code, same character will not share the
same combination of 8-bit code for both EBCDIC and ASCII
◦ For example, let's look at the characters “DP3” in both EBCDIC and
ASCII
Character
D P 3
Encoding system
ASCII 0100 0100 0101 0000 0011 0011
EBCDIC 1100 0100 1101 0111 1111 0011

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 BCD
◦ In electronic systems, binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a method for
representing decimal numbers in which each decimal digit is
represented by 4 binary digits
◦ Advantages:
This makes it relatively easy for the system to convert the numeric
representation for printing or display purposes (especially in digital
clocks, digital thermometers, and other electronic devices with seven-
segment display)
Speeds up decimal calculations

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 BCD (Cont.)
◦ Disadvantages:
representing decimal numbers in this way takes up more space in
memory than using a more conventional binary representation
The circuitry required to carry out calculations also tends to be more
complex

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 BCD (Cont.)
Decimal Natural Binary Coded
◦ BCD code is also known as number Binary Decimal(BCD)
8421 code because each 0 0000 0000
1 0001 0001
decimal digit (0-9) is 2 0010 0010
represented with 4-bit code 3 0011 0011

(weighted 23, 22, 21, 20 4 0100 0100

5 0101 0101
respectively) 6 0110 0110
7 0111 0111
◦ Note that values greater 8 1000 1000
than 1001 (1010, 1011, 1100, 9 1001 1001
1101, 1110, or 1111) 10 1010 0001 0000
11 1011 0001 0001
are not valid BCD decimal 12 1100 0001 0010
values 13 1101 0001 0011
14 1110 0001 0100
15 1111 0001 0101
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 BCD (Cont.)
◦ To express any decimal number in BCD, simply replace each decimal
digit with the appropriate 4-bit code
◦ Example 1: Convert each of the following decimal numbers into BCD
Decimal digit 5
1. 5 BCD 0101

Decimal digit 3 5
2. 35 BCD 0011 0101

Decimal digit 9 8
3. 98
BCD 1001 1000

Decimal digit 1 7 0
4. 170
BCD 0001 0111 0000

Decimal digit 2 4 6 9
5. 2469
BCD 0010 0100 0110 1001
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 BCD (Cont.)
◦ It is equally easy to determine a decimal number from a BCD
number
◦ Start at the LSB and break the code into groups of 4-bit
◦ Then identify the appropriate decimal digit represented by each 4-
bit group

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 BCD (Cont.)
◦ Example 2: Convert each of the following BCD codes to decimal number
BCD 1000 0110
a. 10000110BCD Decimal Digit 8 6

BCD 0011 0101 0001

b. 001101010001BCD Decimal Digit 3 5 1

BCD 1001 0100 0111 0000

c. 1001010001110000BCD
Decimal Digit 9 4 7 0

d. 001001100100BCD BCD 0010 0110 0100

Decimal Digit ?? ?? ??

e. 100110000011BCD BCD ?? ?? ??
Decimal Digit ?? ?? ??

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 Gray Code
◦ Invented by Frank Gray, also known as Reflected Binary Code
◦ Is a type of unweighted binary code, which means there are no
specific weights assigned to each bit position, therefore it is not
applicable for arithmetic calculations
◦ The important feature of Gray Code is that it exhibits only a single
bit change from one code word to the next in sequence
◦ This allows system designer to perform error checking as the data
must be incorrect if more than one bit has been changed during
each count (each transition from one number / position to the next
adjacent one)
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 Gray Code Table

A gray code can have ANY number of bits, not necessarily 4-bit code only 37
 Gray Code (Cont.)
◦ Imagine in natural binary number system, as many as four digit
could change for a single count
◦ For example:
◦ Transition from binary 0111 to 1000 (decimal number 7 to 8) involves
the changes towards all the four binary digits
◦ But transition from gray code 0100 (710) to 1100 (810) involves only
one bit of changes (at the MSB)
◦ Therefore, Gray Code is considered to be an error-minimizing code.
◦ Besides that, the speed of transition for Gray Code is faster than code
changes for natural binary or BCD code
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 Application of Gray Code
◦ Gray codes are used with shaft position encoder for accurate
control of robots and machine tools
◦ Three IR emitter/detectors are used to encode the position of the shaft
◦ Encoder on the left uses binary and can have three bits change together, creating a
potential error. Encoder on the right uses gray code and only 1-bit changes, eliminating
potential error.

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 Application of Gray Code (Cont.)
◦ Mathematical puzzle like “Tower of Hanoi” can be solved by using the
concept of Gray Code as it allows only one plate to be shifted at a time

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 Gray Code vs Natural Binary
◦ Conversion from Gray Code to Binary number can be performed by
applying the logic of Exclusive-OR gate

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 Conversion of Natural Binary to Gray Code
Example 1:
Binary 1 1 0 1
Convert 11012 into Gray Code
Solution:
1. Retain MSB of binary number to be Gray 1
Gray Code’s MSB
2. 2nd bit of Gray code will be obtained Gray 1 0
by performing exclusive-or of the 1st
bit and second bit of binary number Gray 1 0 1
3. Repeat until the last bit of binary
number has been converted Gray 1 0 1 1

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Conversion of Natural Binary to Gray Code (Cont.)
Example 2: Binary 1 0 0 1 1

Convert 100112 into Gray Code

Solution:
Gray 1
1. Retain MSB of binary number to be
Gray 1 1
Gray Code’s MSB
2. 2nd bit of Gray code will be obtained Gray 1 1 0
by performing exclusive-or of the 1st
bit and second bit of binary number Gray 1 1 0 1

3. Repeat until the last bit of binary Gray 1 1 0 1 0

number has been converted
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 Conversion of Gray Code to Natural Binary
Example 3:
Gray 1 1 0 1
Convert Gray Code 11012 into its
binary equivalent value
Solution: Binary 1
1. Retain MSB of Gray code to be Natural
Binary’s MSB Binary 1 0
2. 2nd bit of Natural Binary will be
obtained by performing exclusive-or of Binary 1 0 0
the 1st bit of Natural Binary with 2nd bit
of Gray Code
Binary 1 0 0 1
3. Repeat until the last bit of Gray Code
has been converted 44
Conversion of Gray Code to Natural Binary (Cont.)
Example 4:
Gray 1 0 0 1 1
Convert Gray Code 100112 into its
binary equivalent value
Solution: Binary 1
1. Retain MSB of Gray code to be Natural
Binary 1 1
Binary’s MSB
2. 2nd bit of Natural Binary will be Binary 1 1 1
obtained by performing exclusive-or of
the 1st bit of Natural Binary with 2nd bit Binary 1 1 1 0
of Gray Code
Binary 1 1 1 0 1
3. Repeat until the last bit of Gray Code
has been converted 45
 Exercise 1
◦ Convert each Gray Code below into it’s Natural Binary value
a. 1012
b. 11002
c. 101012
d. 1001012
◦ Convert each Binary Number below into Gray Code
a. 1012
b. 11002
c. 101012
d. 1001012 46