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Week 04 Notes for CST8214
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-Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - www.idallen.com

Remember - knowing how to find out an answer is more important than
memorizing the answer.  Learn to fish!  RTFM!  (Read The Fine Manual)

In Week 5 is your first midterm test: 12noon February 8.
The topics on the test are in the Class Notes file: test1topics.txt
You can see a copy of last year's test in last year's course notes.

Lab #3 became available on January 28.  Hand it in (stapled) during any
lab or class before 2pm Wednesday February 6.  I do not have an assignment
submission box; you must hand the lab directly to me in a class.  See my
online timetable to know where I am during the day.

Make sure your section number is clearly marked on your labs.

For methods for doing the lab work, see the Class Notes files:

    ieee754_conversions.txt
    hexadecimal_conversions.txt
    overflow.txt
    binary_math.txt

The Big Picture
---------------

Bit patterns have no inherent meaning. They may represent signed integers,
unsigned integers, floating point numbers, or even executable program
instructions. The instructions that operate on the bits give the bits
meaning.  You write the programs that generate those instructions.

Example:  The 32-bit pattern 00111111100000000000000000000000 (3F800000h)
 If you interpret this bit pattern as:
   unsigned integer -> 1065353216 decimal
   sign/magnitude   -> 1065353216 decimal
   two's complement -> 1065353216 decimal
   IEEE 754 SP FP   -> 1.0 decimal

Example:  The 32-bit pattern 10111111100000000000000000000000 (BF800000h)
 If you interpret this bit pattern as:
   unsigned integer ->  3212836864 decimal
   sign/magnitude   -> -1065353216 decimal
   two's complement -> -1082130431 decimal
   IEEE 754 SP FP   -> -1.0 decimal

Numbers represented in computers have a limited size (number of bits),
hence limited precision and limited range.  Numbers can be stored as
integers or as floating-point values.  Both precision and range are
essentially the same for integers, since integers have no exponent field.
Floating point numbers have both a mantissa (for precision) and an
exponent field (for range); they usually trade away some precision in
favour of greater range.

Though floating-point numbers almost always have a greater range than
integers, the range is not infinite.  To store a value accurately in a
floating-point representation in a computer, two things must work out:
the number's value must lie within the *range* of the floating-point
representation (the exponent must fit), and the value must not lose any
*precision* (the mantissa must fit).  In practice, some precision is
often lost when working with floating-point numbers.