two's complement
Noun

two's complement

  1. (computing) The number obtained by complementing every bit of a given number and adding one. A number and its complement add to 2n, where n is the word size of the machine.
    The two's complement of 0xAAAA is 0x5556 on a 16-bit machine, and 0xFFFF5556 on a 32-bit machine.
  2. (computing) The convention by which bit patterns with high bit 0 represent positive numbers from 0 to 2^{n-1} - 1 directly, while bit patterns with high bit 1 represent negative numbers from -1 to -2^{n - 1}, n being the word size of the machine, and the numeric complement of a number is its two's complement.
    Nearly all modern computers use two's complement for integer arithmetic.
Related terms Translations
  • Portuguese: complemento de dois



This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
Offline English dictionary