The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition

8.3 Decimal Arithmetic

The 80x86 CPUs use the binary numbering system for their native internal representation. The binary numbering system is, by far, the most common numbering system in use in computer systems today. In the early days, however, there were computer systems that were based on the decimal (base 10) numbering system instead of the binary numbering system. Consequently, their arithmetic system was decimal based rather than binary. Such computer systems were very popular in systems targeted for business/commercial systems.^[115] Although systems designers have discovered that binary arithmetic is almost always better than decimal arithmetic for general calculations, the myth still persists that decimal arithmetic is better for money ...