Computers can understand only the machine language which consists of ones and zeros. Binary information is stored in memory or processor registers. Register contains either data or information. It is necessary to know about the types of data and the information which controls the process to understand certain operations of digital computers.
Information Representation
Information is represented in a computer by a set of binary digits. These binary digits are grouped together which form a word. A word is a unit of information of fixed length. The length of word depends upon the type of the computer and its hardware capabilities. A word is a binary coded character set. In olden generations 6-bit character codes are used to represent the information. 8-bit binary sequences i.e., bytes are used for character representation in the later generations. Example of one such code is ASCII. Latest computers have CPU word sizes 8, 16, 32, 64 bits. The information is stored in memory or registers. The contents of registers may be either data or control information. Data are number and other binary coded information that are manipulated to obtain some results. Control information is a bit or a group of bits used to generate the necessary control signals needed for manipulation of the data which is in registers.