DATA STRUCTURES AND ALGORITHMS

Data Organization in Computing

By
Samuel K. Opoku
Computer Science Department
Kumasi Technical University

Video Link
https://blackboard.skopoku.org/tutorials/data_rep.mp4

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 CONTENT
• Computer Architecture and Operations

• Data Representation and Processing

• Internal Representation of Data

Computer Architecture and

Operations

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COMPONENTS OF A COMPUTER SYSTEM

Recall the functions of the various components of the computer system

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COMPONENTS OF A SYSTEM UNIT

Recall the functions of the various components

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 COMPONENTS OF THE MOTHER BOARD

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COMPONENTS OF THE MOTHER BOARD

Components on the motherboard are usually made as Integrated Circuit (IC)

which consists of thousands or millions of transistors, capacitors and resistors
acting as computer memory, amplifiers, oscillators, counters and timers
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• A typical inner architecture of an Integrated Circuit

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SCHEMATIC REPRESENTATION

• based on stored
program design

• processor system
– CPU
– memory

• input/output system
– input/output devices
– secondary storage

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 CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
• CPU is a complex set of electronic circuitry that controls and executes
stored program instructions

• Two parts
– Control Unit (CU):
• Directs the computer system to execute stored program instructions.
Must communicate with memory and ALU. Sends data and
instructions from secondary storage to memory as needed

– Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)

• Executes all arithmetic and logical operations.
• Arithmetic operations (+, -, *, /)
• Logical operations: Compare numbers, letters, or special characters
using operators like >, <, =

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CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT

• Manages the instruction-execution cycle
– FETCH – DECODE – EXECUTE
• Coordinates the activities of other devices

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 DATA STORAGE AND CPU
• Two types of storage:
– Primary storage (memory): Stores data temporarily. CPU refers to it
for both program instructions and data
– Secondary storage: Long-term storage. Stored on external medium,
such as a disk

• CPU cannot process data from disk or input device. It must first reside in
memory. Control unit retrieves data from disk and moves it into memory.
Items are sent to ALU for processing. Control unit sends items to ALU,
then sends back to memory after processing

• Data and instructions are held in memory until sent to an output or storage
device or program is shut down

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MAIN MEMORY
• (fast access) storage device for preserving binary data and instructions
• memory is divided into units such as bytes or words
• each is usually a standard size or fixed-length
• each memory word has a unique address for random access
• Types:
Random Access Memory (RAM) Read Only Memory (ROM)
– readable – readable
– writeable – permanent
– usually volatile (e.g., Dynamic – Nonvolatile
RAM or DRAM)
– general storage – special-purpose storage for
data and instructions

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 MAIN MEMORY
• Each memory location has an address: A unique number, much like a
mailbox. May contain only one instruction or piece of data . When data is
written back to memory, previous contents of that address are destroyed
• Location is referred to by number but programming languages use a
symbolic (named) address called variables, such as Hours or Salary

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REGISTERS

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 THE CPU AND MAIN MEMORY

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INSIDE THE CPU

Memory
Memory Data Register
Address
Register

Accumulator
(work register)
Instruction
register

Program Arithmetic
counter System Logic Unit
clock

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 FETCH THE INSTRUCTION

1. Address of the next instruction is 3. Instruction is copied from

transferred from PC (Program Counter) memory to MDR (Memory Data
to MAR (Memory Address Register) Register)

2. The instruction is located in memory 27

DECODE THE EXECUTE THE

INSTRUCTION INSTRUCTION

5. Control unit sends signals to

4. Instruction is transferred to
appropriate devices to cause
and decoded in the IR
execution of the instruction
(Instruction Register) 28

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 SYSTEM CLOCK
• Function of the system clock: synchronizes all the components on the mother
board. If the clock is high, all the components do their work. Because the CPU
needs to perform more operations per time than the mother board, the CPU clock is
much higher.

• If the clock speed (or clock rate) is say 2GHz, it means the clock pulses (clock
cycles) 2 billion times per second. That is, under ideal circumstances, the
processor/CPU should execute 2 billions instructions per second. However, in real
world scenarios, the CPU is often stuck waiting for other components to answer
back, especially RAM and disk. Delays can occur every time a program has to
make a decision about which code path to go (conditionals)

Note: Modern processors try to beat this by predicting which path will be taken before
that point is actually reached, but if the prediction turns out to be wrong you incur
additional penalties.

Thus increasing clock frequency does increase the operations per second, but number
of operations performed by the CPU is largely defined based on the underlying CPU
architecture itself and the actual code running on the CPU
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TYPES OF PROCESSOR OPERATIONS

• Data Movement Operations • Arithmetic and Logical Operations
– moving data from memory – integer arithmetic
to the CPU – comparing two quantities
– moving data from memory – shifting, rotating bits in a quantity
to memory – testing, comparing, and
– input and output converting bits

• Program Control
– starting a program
– halting a program
– skipping to other instructions
– testing data to decide whether to skip over
some instructions
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 OPERATIONS WITHIN DIGITAL SYSTEMS(1/2)
Four operations to which information may be subjected to in digital
systems are:

1. Storage: Computer stores data and instructions either temporally

or permanently using storage devices such as registers and main
memory
2. Input / Output:
o The computer performs input or output or both operations also
internally
o Input operation – Data or instructions are given to the
computer through an input device such as the keyboard for
processing by the computer
o Output operation – Processed data is given to external
systems through an output device such as monitor
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OPERATIONS WITHIN DIGITAL SYSTEMS(2/2)

3. Transmission:
o Data is transmitted or communicated from one device to
another along communication channels
o In some instances, data and/or information is brought from far
away through space through communication devices such as
satellite systems

4 Processing: The act of processing data describes the manipulation

of the representation of the data given to the computer in order to
produce expected output.

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Data Representation and Processing

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DEFINITIONS (1/2)
• Data:
o It refers to any or all facts, numbers, letters and symbols that
describe an object, idea conditions, situations, event or some
other factors
o Data is intended to depict a real life phenomenon but in
themselves do not make any sense
o In computing, data refers to symbols (materials) to be operated
upon by the computer

• Information:
o It refers processed data that makes sense and meaningful to the
recipient of the information

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 DEFINITIONS (2/2)
o Mathematically: Information = Data + Meaning

o Data and information are sometimes used interchangeably and

that the context in which either is used is what matters.

• Knowledge:
o It is derived from operation of data and/or information that
goes a long way to strengthen decisions that users make

o Knowledge is a generalization of a body of ideas derived from

operations performed on data and/or information
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DATA REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING (1/2)

• Basically, data is an abstract concept and it is natural to associate
symbols with many concepts.
Examples: What is ‘2’ and ‘B’?
2 is not the abstract number two. But it is a symbol that
represents it. Similarly, B is a symbol representing the second
letter of the alphabets

• Classification of data processing system:

o Discrete (or Digital) Systems: They use symbols to represent
numbers or quantities
o Analogue Systems: They use continuous physical measures such
as length or voltage to represent numbers or quantities.

NB: There are also systems called hybrids which combine the methods
of both discrete and analogue systems
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DATA REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING (2/2)
• Data processing in digital systems is done in such a way that if a
real operation (P) is performed on the data (I) to give result (O),
then a representation of P is performed on a representation of I to
give a representation of O.

• This is summarised in the figure below:

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Internal Representation of Data

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 INTERNAL REPRESENTATION OF DATA
• Both instructions and the data which the computer deals with are made up of
symbols called characters that are coded in the form suitable for electronic
storage

• Common Coding Schemes:

– ASCII: Stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Most widely used standard. Used on virtually all personal computers
– EBCDIC: Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code. Used
primarily on IBM and IBM-compatible mainframes
– Unicode: Designed to accommodate alphabets of more than 256
characters. Uses 16 bits to represent one character (65,536 possible
values)

• Below is a typical storage code for the character A and the decimal digit 1

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INTERNAL REPRESENTATION OF DATA

• The storage is accomplished through tiny magnetic or electrical components
which takes one of the two states – “ON” or “OFF”. Eight individual
components (called a byte): each storing one bit of information is used to
store a particular character

• Transistors are electronic switches that may or may not allow electric
current to pass through. If current passes through, switch is on, representing
a 1 bit Otherwise, switch is off, representing a 0 bit

• A Group of the individual components (usually transistors) is forced into the

pre-established pattern of “ON” and “OFF” states corresponding to the
character’s code

• Thousands of groups of components are provided so that the computer will

be able to store all the instructions in a program as well as the data it must
process at any given time
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 BYTE AND WORD
• Byte: A group of 8 bits.
– Each byte has 256 (28) possible values
– For text, stores one character: Can be letter, digit, or special character
– Memory and storage devices measured in number of bytes

• Word: The number of bits the CPU processes as a unit

– Typically a whole number of bytes
– The larger the word, the more powerful the computer
– Personal computers typically 32 or 64 bits in length

• Storage Size
– Kilobyte: 1024 (210) bytes
– Megabyte: roughly one million (220) bytes
– Gigabyte: roughly one billion (230) bytes
– Terabyte: roughly one trillion (240) bytes 43

CALCULATIONS
Note: 1024 Kilo = 1 Mega and 8bits = 1B or a byte
1GB RAM = 1024MB RAM which contains 8(1024)2 transistors
(convert byte to bits by multiplying it by 8)

1. How many transistors (electrical components) are required by RAM of

the following sizes:
a. 128MB b. 512MB c. 5GB d. 128KB

2. How many characters will a RAM of the following sizes store when a
byte is used to store a character:
a. 156MB b. 225MB c. 2GB d. 98KB

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Assignment
Describe how the computer handles images, audio and video files. Your
report should be precise and concise without any ambiguity but should
NOT be more than 200 words

Deadline: Sunday 28th May, 2023, 11:59pm

Format: Use a text file.

Note:
• Your work will be ignored if the file type is not text (.txt) and the
report contains more than 200 words

• The work should be done individually.

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HIT ANY KEY TO END DAY 1

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