Beginning x64 Assembly Programming: From Novice to AVX Professional

© Jo Van Hoey 2019

J. Van HoeyBeginning x64 Assembly Programminghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5076-1_2

2. Binary Numbers, Hexadecimal Numbers, and Registers

Jo Van Hoey¹ 

(1)

Hamme, Belgium

 

In current computers, bits are the smallest piece of information; a bit can have a value of 1 or 0. In this chapter, we will investigate how bits are combined to represent data, such as integers or floating-point values. The decimal representation of values, which is so intuitive to humans, is not ideal for computers to work with. When you have a binary system, with only two possible values (1 or 0), it is much more efficient to work with powers of 2. When we talk about historical computer generations, you had 8-bit CPUs (2³), 16-bit CPUs (2⁴), 32-bit CPUs ...