-
Leftmost position represents a negative sign when set equal to 1.
-
The remaining bits in the number indicate the magnitude (or absolute value).
-
A consequence of this representation is that there are two ways to represent zero:
-
00000000 (0) and
-
10000000 (-0).
-
Unfortunately, this type of encoding would require a cumbersome hardware to do arithmetic addition.
|
-
8 bit signed magnitude:
|
Binary value |
Signed magnitude interpretation |
Unsigned interpretation |
|
00000000 |
0 |
0 |
|
00000001 |
1 |
1 |
|
... |
... |
... |
|
01111111 |
127 |
127 |
|
10000000 |
-0 |
128 |
|
... |
... |
... |
|
11111111 |
-127 |
255 |
|