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Christian InTech Articles - Computers
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Make Printer Colors Print Right.
Having trouble understanding dpi and resolution? Pictures not printing in the color you expected? Here’s an inkjet project you can do to help you understand how it all works! After you do the project (or don’t do it!), read on for some color...
Seecrets On Security: A Gentle Introduction To Cryptography
With the increasing incidence of identity thefts, credit card frauds, social engineering attacks, the digital world is facing challenges in the years ahead. Obviously, cryptography, a young science, will play a prominent role in the security of...
Specialized Solutions Unveils New CompTIA Security+ Training
Specialized Solutions Unveils New CompTIA Security+ Training Tarpon Springs, FL - Specialized Solutions, Inc., premier developer of self-study and certification training products, introduces its new CompTIA Server+ Certification Training and Test...
Spyware Prevention
Spyware prevention is essential to keeping your computer running smoothly, but in the current world of computers it is becoming increasingly difficult to win the battle over spyware prevention. The problem seems to be that spyware is everywhere....
The Seven Golden Rules Of Data Backups
Backups of company data are carried out for two main reasons. The first is to cater for those times when a document is inadvertently deleted or damaged and you wish to recover the original document; the second is as part of a disaster recovery...
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What Is Computer Programming Anyway?
Computer programming in plain language, is giving
instructions to a computer to do something. Technically it
is actually giving instructions to the microprocessor - the
brain of a computer.
If the instructions are only for the microprocessor, why a
computer is so complicated with numerous types of hardware
accessories?
All the other hardware are to support the function of
feeding the instructions to the microprocessor, and
conveying the result from the microprocessor to its user -
which can be a human or another computer or hardware.
Every time you want a computer to do something you have to
give the instructions. Luckily people are smart enough to
figure out that since we might want the computer to repeat
the same process over and over again, we better store the
instructions into a permanent storage - hard disk, CD, flash
memory etc.
The stored instructions are called COMPUTER PROGRAM or
computer software and the act of arranging the instructions
is called COMPUTER PROGRAMMING and the person that is
responsible to arrange the instructions is called
.....COMPUTER PROGRAMMER ...do you see the pattern here?
On the lowest level, a microprocessor only understands a
limited set of instructions. To a microprocessor the
instruction sets and data are read in “binary” form.
Binary means 2 states – such as in on and off, high and low,
left and right. To make it easier mathematically, binary
normally is represented by 1 and 0. Electrically, 1
represents high voltage and 0 represents low voltage.
On the hard disk, program instructions look just like a
stream of 1s and 0s. But a microprocessor reads in the
stream one chunk at a time. Among normal chunk sizes are 8,
16, and 32. Chunk size is normally referred to as
instruction size.
One binary data (that can be a 1 or a 0) is called a “bit”.
For example a data “1001” is a 4
bit data. Where first bit
is 1, second bit is 0, third bit is another 0 and the fourth
bit is 1.
Bit is the computer terminology for “chunk”.
How instructions can be represented by bits?
One bit data can only represent 1 out of 2 possible states –
either 1 or 0. Which in real world can be used to represent
things such as on or off, high or low, black or white – any
2 states condition?
If we increase the instruction size to 2 bits, then we can
represent 4 instructions – 00, or 01, or 10 or 11. If we
increase the size to 3 bits then we can represent 8 possible
instructions – 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110 and 111
If you notice the trend from the above examples is that
maximum possible number of instructions is the power of 2 of
the bit size. That is 2 bits can represent maximum of 2^2
(which is 4) instructions, and 3 bits can represent maximum
of 2^3 (which is 2x2x2 = 8) instructions.
So 8 bits data can represent maximum of 2^8 (2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2
= 256) instructions (or states) and 32 bits data can
represent 2^32 (4,294,967,296) instructions.
You can actually read a program stream contents using
certain editor – normally called HEX editor. Using these
special text editors you can look at the instructions in
binary, hexadecimal, octal, and decimal format.
I’ll cover the details of what each of the above format
(hex, oct and dec) means in other article.
Permission is granted for this article to forward, reprint
or distribute, use for ezine, website, offer as free bonus
or part of a product for sales as long as no changes are
made and the byline, copyright and the resource box is
included.
About the Author
Resource Box: Copyright © Shamsul Anuar of Bouncingcube.com
newsletter. To learn more about computer programming and
software development visit www.bouncingcube.com and
subscribe to the free newsletter
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