Page 19 - DCAP104_EXPOSURE_TO_COMPUTER_DISCPLINES

Exposure to Computer Disciplines

Notes This number in any of the above form (if represented in BCD) requires 17 bits for mantissa
(1 for sign and 4 each decimal digit as BCD) and 9 bits for exponent (1 for sign and 4 for each
decimal digit as BCD). Please note that the exponent indicates the correct decimal location.
In the first case where exponent is +2, indicates that actual position of the decimal point is
two places to the right of the assumed position, while exponent - 2 indicates that the assumed
position of the point is two places towards the left of assumed position. The assumption of the
position of point is normally the same in a computer resulting in a consistent computational
environment.

Floating-point numbers are often represented in normalised forms. A floating point
number whose mantissa does not contain zero as the, most significant digit of the number
is considered to be in normalised form. For example, a BCD mantissa + 370 which is 0 001
1 01 1 1 0000 is in normalized form because these leading zero’s are not part of a zero digit.
On the other hand a binary number 001 100 is not in a normalised form. The normalised
form of this number is:
0 1100
(sign)
A floating binary number +1010.001 in a 16-bit register can be represented in normalised form
(assuming 10 bits for mantissa and 6 bits for exponent):

A zero cannot be normalised as all the digits in mantissa in this case has to
be zero. Arithmetic operations involved with floating point numbers are
more complex in nature, take longer time for execution and require complex
hardware. Yet the floating-point representation is must as it is useful in
scientific calculations. Real numbers are normally represented as floating
point numbers.

Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam President of India: May 28, 2003 Indian President calls for greater use
of open source software “In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a
big way for the benefit of our billion people’’ The President of India has called for the extensive
of open-source software to replace costly proprietary information technology programmes.
In a speech at the country’s International Institute of Information Technology, President Abdul
Kalam, expressed his concern that so many sectors, including government and education,
were still dependent on costly proprietary software packages, calling it a “most unfortunate
thing.” “In India, open sourcecode software will have to come and stay in a big way for the
benefit of our billion people,” he added.
The Indian President also reminded the IT industry of the importance of Indian language
computing solutions: “We must have (Indian) search engines, word processing tools, optical
character recognisers, speech recognisers and machine translators.” The Indian President
Contd...

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