UNIVERSIDAD DE BURGOS

DEPARTAMENTO DE DIGITALIZACIÓN

Appendix I to Topic 2 - Binary System

The most commonly used method by digital electronic systems is

Binary (or base 2) which uses only two digits to represent the
information, 0 and 1.

These values conceptually written as zero [0] and one [1] can
be represented for example by: two voltage levels, two
magnetization states (N and S), two situations of a light-emitting
device (off and on), etc.

The encoding of information in binary produces large amounts

of bit patterns.
To measure the amount of information represented in binary,
multiples are used which, unlike other physical quantities, use the
multiplier factor 1024 instead of 1000, because it is the closest
power of 2 to that value (210 = 1024).

Originally the S.I. System prefixes were used: Kilo, Mega,

Giga, Tera ... which are based on powers of 10 (e.g.: 1Km. = 10 3
m.), but in binary we use powers of 2 :

Multipliers
Multiplier Representing ...
Byte 8 bits
KiloByte 1024 bytes (or 210 bytes)
MegaByte 1024 Kbytes (or 210 KBytes)
GigaByte 1024 MBytes (or 210 MBytes)
TeraByte 1024 GBytes ( or 210 GBytes)
PetaByte 1024 TBytes ( or 210 TBytes)
ExaByte 1024 PBytes (or 210 PBytes)
etc. etc.

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 UNIVERSIDAD DE BURGOS
DEPARTAMENTO DE DIGITALIZACIÓN

Information encoding in binary system

Data of any type can be encoded in binary. It is made by

giving each possible value of that data a combination of zeros and
ones that is not repeated for any other value, using the necessary
number of bits.

Examples:

Value Code Value Code Value Code

Yes 0 Cyan 00 0 0000
No 1 Magenta 01 1 0001
Yellow 10 2 0010
Key 11 3 0011
4 0100
5 0101
6 0110
7 0111
8 1000
9 1001

® How many bits are needed in each case?

For example, if we need to encode 87 symbols :

With n bits we can represent up to 2n different values, then

we have to find a number of bits (n) such that 2n >= 87. In
this case, any n>=7 will do.

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