Computers & Binary (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE Computer Science)

Why Computers Use Binary

Why does data have to be converted to binary to be processed by a computer?

• Data is processed in a computer using logic gates that only have two states

• The binary number system only has two digits (1/0), which means each digit can represent a different state (1 = on, 0 = off)

• All data must be converted to binary before a computer can understand and process it

• Converting data to binary allows computers to process it at an incredible speed, perform complex calculations and store vast amounts of data efficiently

• Secondary storage is a great example of the process

  • Magnetic hard drives use North and South polarity to represent a 1 or a 0

  • In Optical disks, light hitting a flat area (land) is interpreted as a 1 and light hitting a bump (pit) is interpreted as a 0

• Take an example of driving a car

  • When driving a car the accelerator pedal is used to increase the cars speed

  • If a car was accelerating from 50mph to 100mph the increase would be gradual

  • In a computer system, the car is doing either 50mph (0) or 100mph (1), there is no in-between

  • Trying to change the computer system so that it has more options would be less efficient and require more complex parts for the computer to understand