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Microprocessor's Romance with Integers
By Vivek Agrawal One of the first things we learn about computers is that they only understand 0s and 1s, or bits. We humans, on the other hand, communicate numbers via the decimal system. This system uses digits from 0 to 9 along with plus and minu...
Since computers can use only two digits – 0 and 1 – engineers and mathematicians back in the day designed clever techniques for representing negative numbers and for doing arithmetic with them. Understanding the challenges and the beauty of binary arithmetic design (of positive and especially negative integers) is one of the most fundamental concepts in a computer processor. But think of early computers like EDVAC which was run on thousands of vacuum tubes consuming power in kilowatts operated by hundreds of people a day.
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