Introduction

Data representation refers to the way that values are stored in a computer. For technical reasons, computers do not use the familiar base-10 number system but rather avail themselves of the base-2 (binary) system. Under this paradigm, numbers are represented as 1's and 0's.

Integer Representation

When storing an integer value, there are two ways to represent it - signed and unsigned - depending on whether the value should be entirely non-negative or may also have a "-" sign. Based on the number of bits used for storing a value, the value may have a different range.

Size	Range Size	Unsigned Range	Signed Range
Byte (8 bits)
Word (16 bits)
Doubleword (32 bits)
Quadword (64 bits)
Double Quadword (128 bits)

Unsigned integers are represented in their typical binary form.

Two's Complement

Signed integers are represented using two's complement. In order to convert a acquire the negative form of a number in two's complement, is two negate all of its bits and add 1 to the number. A corollary of this representation is that it adds no complexity to the addition and subtraction operations.