APSC 380 : I NTRODUCTION TO M ICROCOMPUTERS

1997/98 W INTER S ESSION T ERM 2

Number Bases and

C’s Bitwise Operators
This lecture reviews conversion between decimal, binary and hexadecimal numbers, describes C’s bitwise logical
operators and shows how binary numbers are represented by voltage levels.
After this lecture you should be able to: convert a decimal value to and from binary, convert a binary value to and
from hexadecimal, evaluate expressions that use C’s bitwise logical and shift operators, and convert between bus
signal levels and a numeric value.
Number Systems exponent value
0 1
1 2
2 4
We commonly use decimal notation to express the 3 8
value of a number. However, in digital logic hard- 4 16
ware (including computers) numbers are represented 5 32
with two-valued (binary) values. To be able to 6 64
7 128
deal with the hardware representation of numbers
8 256
we need to be able to convert between the decimal
9 512
and binary representation of numbers. Note that the 10 1024
value of a number does not change when we express 11 2048
it in a different base. 12 4096
13 8192
14 16384
15 32768

To convert from binary to decimal we just need to

add up the powers of two corresponding to the bit
Binary Representation positions that are ’1’s.
Exercise: Convert the binary number 1001 0110 to a decimal
number.
In the decimal number system each digit position
represents a different power of ten. The rightmost
digit gives the number of multiples of 100 in the num-
To convert from decimal to binary it is necessary
ber, the next digit gives the multiples of 101, and so
to find the appropriate combination of powers of two
on. For example, 105 5 100 0 101 1 102 .
that will add up to the desired decimal number. This
Binary numbers work in the same way, but since is done by repeatedly subtracting the largest possible
only two values are possible for each digit, each po- power of two until the remaining value is zero.
sition represents a different power of two. The right- For example, to convert the decimal value 35, we
0
most digit gives the number of multiples of 2 , the find the largest power of two less than or equal to
5
next digit gives the multiples of 21, and so on. For 35: 32 (2 ). The remainder is 35 32 3. The
example, 110 0 20 1 21 1 22 0 1 next largest power of that can be subtracted is 21 2.
1 2 1 4 6(base 10) . Subtracting this value leaves 3 2 1. The next pos-
sible power of two is 20 1. Subtracting this value
The table below shows the decimal values of pow- leaves 0. Therefore 35 1 24 0 23 0 22
ers of 2 for exponents from 0 to 15: 1 21 1 25 which is 10011 in binary.

lec3.tex 1
 Exercise: Convert the decimal number 86 to a binary num- Hexadecimal and Octal Constants in C
ber.
We can use hexadecimal notation in C programs by
prefixing the constant using the characters ’0x’. The
Hexadecimal Representation hex digits may be in upper of lower case. For exam-
Binary numbers are too verbose for many purposes ple, the constant 0x21 has the value 33 (decimal).
so we often use use hexadecimal (base 16) numbers. C also has octal (base 8) constants which are de-
Hex numbers are less verbose but also easier to con- noted by prefixing a number with a zero. For exam-
vert to binary. Since the base is 16, we need 16 dif- ple the constant 010 has the value 8 (decimal). Octal
ferent digits. We use the digits 0 to 9 and the letters A notation is no longer widely used.
to F. The following table shows the the 16 hexadec- Unfortunately, C does not have binary constants.
imal digits and the corresponding values in decimal
and binary.
C’s Bitwise Logical Operators
decimal binary hex
0 0000 0 These operators operate bit-by-bit on the binary rep-
1 0001 1 resentation of their operands.
2 0010 2 The bitwise complement operator, ˜, is a unary op-
3 0011 3 erator similar to the logical negation operator and has
4 0100 4
the same precedence. However, it inverts the values
5 0101 5
6 0110 6 of the bits in the binary representation of the operand.
7 0111 7 If a bit is 0, the bitwise negation sets that bit in the
8 1000 8 result to 1 and vice versa. For example, ˜ 2 has the
9 1001 9 value 1 (2 is 10 and 1 is 01 in binary).
10 1010 A The bitwise ‘and’, ‘exclusive-or’1 and ‘or’ oper-
11 1011 B ators are &, ˆ, and |. They result in the operation
12 1100 C being applied to the bits in the binary representa-
13 1101 D
tions of their operands. Both operators have lower
14 1110 E
15 1111 F precedence than the comparison operators but higher
precedence than the logical operators. The bitwise
To convert from binary to hex we group the bi- ‘and’ has a higher precedence than the bitwise ‘or’.
nary digits into groups of 4 starting from the least Exercise: What are the values of the following expressions?
significant (rightmost) digit. The we just look up the
corresponding hexadecimal value in the table. ( 7 ˆ 5 ) | 5
Exercise: Convert the binary number 1101000 to hexadeci- 0xAA & 15
mal.
Hex notation is used because the conversion be- Note that there is an important difference between
tween hex and binary is much simpler than between logical and bitwise logical operators. For example,
decimal and binary. This is becase each hex digit the expression 5 && 2 is 1 while 5 & 2 is 0.
represents exactly 4 bits. Exercise: Why?
To convert a decimal number to hex you can first
convert the number to binary and then group the bits Bit Shift Operators
into groups of 4 bits starting from the right. These
4-bit patterns are then easily converted to hex digits. C also has bit-shift operators. These operators shift
Similarly, to convert a hex number back to deci- the bits in the left operand left (<<) or right (>>)
mal first convert it to a binary number and find the by the number of bit positions given by the second
corresponding decimal value. operand. For example, x>>2 shifts bits in the binary
Exercise: What are the binary and decimal representations 1 The exclusive or operator gives 0 if the two bits are the same

of the hexadecimal value 0x3F? and 1 otherwise.

2
representation of x right by 2 bits. If x had the value
0x4 (0100 binary), the value of x>>2 is 0x1 (0001).
Exercise: What is the value of 0x4 >> 2? How about 0x4
<< 1? How does shifting the bits in a number left by 1 position
affect the value of a number? How about shifting them right?
Each size of integer can only hold a limited num-
ber of bits (8, 16 or 32). Thus each shift causes one
bit to be shifted “off the end” and another bit to be
shifted in at the other end. The bit that is shifted
out disappears. For unsigned integers a zero is al-
ways shifted in. For right shifts on signed integers
the value of the most significant bit is duplicated and
shifted in.

Binary Numbers and Logic Levels

Computers represent binary values by using two
voltages. For example, one way is to use 0 volts to
represent a binary ’0’ and 5 volts to represent a bi-
nary ’1’. These voltages, sometimes also called low
(L) and high (H), are called logic levels.
A binary number can be represented by a collec-
tion of 8 (for a char) or 16 (for an int) signals2.
Each signal represents a particular bit of a binary
number. A group of related signals is called a bus.
Exercise: The connector used between a PC and a printer
has 25 signal pins. Pin numbers 9 to 23 carry signals generated
by the PC that provide the printer with the ASCII value of the
character that should be printed. You measure the following volt-
ages: 0,5,0,0, 5,0,0,0 on the signal pins. What character is the
printer trying to print?
Note that the opposite convention for logic levels
(H for 0 and L for 1) is also often used.

2A signal is a voltage that carries information.

3 in order from most significant to least significant bit.