• Integers are whole numbers or fixed-point numbers with the radix point fixed after the least-significant bit.

  • They are in contrast to real numbers or floating-point numbers, where the position of the radix point varies.
  • It is important to take note that integers and floating-point numbers are treated differently in computers.
  • They have different representations and are processed differently (e.g., floating-point numbers are processed in a so-called floating-point processor)
  • Computers use a fixed number of bits to represent an integer.

  • The commonly-used bit-lengths for integers are 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, or 64-bit. Besides bit-lengths, there are two representation schemes for integers:

  • Unsigned Integers: can represent zero and positive integers.

Unsigned integers can represent zero and positive integers, but not negative integers. The value of an unsigned integer is interpreted as "the magnitude of its underlying binary pattern".

• Signed Integers: can represent zero, positive and negative integers.

Three representation schemes had been proposed for signed integers: Sign-Magnitude representation

• 1's Complement representation

• 2's Complement representation