Data

Sunday, January 27, 2013 8:19 PM

Memory is stored in bits. Computer systems use a certain number of bits to address memory. The maximum number of words of memory that can be addressed by a system are 2^n power, where n is the number of bits used to address memory. Ex: A particular CPU uses twelve bits to represent a binary number. How many different combinations can be represented? Answer: 2^12 = 4,096 Often, you will be told how much data can be stored in a number / system / etc, in bits, and asked for a decimal equivalent. Convert in binary and estimate in decimal. Use these examples for a better understanding. Ex: A floating point number uses 10 bits for the significant, one bit for the sign, and 5 bits for the exponent. What is the most accurate integer estimate of the number of significant digits for the equivalent decimal number? Work: The question only asks for the significant digits, so we disregard the part about the sign and the exponent. We know we have 10 bits, which means we have 2^10 digits of memory. 2^10 = 1,024, which is about 1000 different combinations. In decimal, that's 0-999, which means three significant digits. Answer: 3 (if rounded), 4 (if exact) The bit rate is the rate at which bits are transmitted. The speed at which signals / bits travel is related to the speed of the media (light for fiber optic, electricity for wires, and radio signals for wireless transmissions). Distance between two computers will affect delay, but not the rate of transmission. The number of intermediate hops (routers that the data must pass through) will not affect transmission rate either, only the delay between transmission and reception. Sometimes you will be asked how much data can be sent over a bus (how much data can be transmitted by a system using a bus of specific bit-width and speed). For these, you must know that the bit-width tells how many bits of data can be transferred per clock cycle. The speed (in Hertz) tells how many clock cycles occur per second. All you have to do is multiply the bit-width by the number of clock cycles per second (and convert to bytes, if need be). Ex: A computer system uses an 8 bit wide bus with a speed of 1MHz to transmit data. What is a good estimate of the amount of data that can be sent over this bus? Assume that one transmission can be made during every clock cycle. Work: 1MHz translates to 1,000,000 clock cycles per second. If the bus makes one transmission per clock cycle, then it transmits 8,000,000 bits per second. This is also 1,000,000 bytes per second. Answer = 8,000,000 bits per second = 1,000,000 bytes per second.

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