Computing Fundamentals

Data encoding & storage

Week 2 Instructor: Shehzad Aslam
Data Storage
 Computers are Binary
 How files are stored?
 How images?
 What about video & audio?
 How PDF?
 Data Encoding deals with format of data
 What’s inside files?
 Demo about RTF
Gates & Flip flops
 Bit (binary digit) 0 or 1
 Boolean operations by George Boole
 AND, OR, XOR
 Gates produces the Boolean operation result i.e True or False
 Collection of gate circuit use to build flip flops
 Maintain output unless a pulse is provided
 Many flip flops can be used to hold data
 Very large scale integration (VLSI)
Memory Organization - RAM
 Manageable units termed as cells, typically 8 bits
 Has unique name called address
 Data in the cell can be accessed randomly
 Design technology
 DRAM (dynamic RAM)
 SDRAM (synchronous RAM)
 Memory Units
 Bit
 Byte
 Kilobyte (KB)
 Megabyte (MB)
 Gigabyte (GB)
 Terabyte (TB)
Mass Storage – Hard disk
 Magnetic plates mounted on spindle having read / write head
 Plate is divided into tracks & sectors
 Logical division of tracks & sectors can be re-adjusted during formatting
 Mechanical disk has few delays
 Seek time: time to move head from one track to other
 Rotation delay: half time to fully rotate disk; also called latency
 Access time is: Seek time + rotation delay
 Transfer speed is usually in MB/sec
 Disk is sealed in casing to protect from dust
Representing Strings
 ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) table
 Each letter, number, symbols are assigned a number
 That number is saved in memory
 ASCII table is used to show letter / number / symbol shape
 Each letter is represented in 7bits resulting in 128 characters
 Extended ASCII is 8bits resulting in 256 characters
 Unicode is 16bits having 65,536 characters
Representing Audio
 Measured amplitude of wave and sampled at constant rate
 Telephonic communication
 8000 samples per second
 Music Recording
 44,100 samples per second
 Each sample in 16 bits
 Stereo in 32 bits
Representing Image
 Pixel (picture element) value is store in bit map
 Red, green, blue component stored separately each in 8 bits
 Or gray intensity is saved
 Bitmap has rescaling problem i.e. more zoom is more grainy look
 So image can be as geometric structure
 Can be saved as bitmap or geometric values
Reading

 Chapter 1 from Computer Science an Overview