On Jun 16, 2022, at 10:43:36, Robin Vowels wrote:
Computers have had instructions for signed and unsigned binary since at least 1951. When negative values are expressed using twos complement notation, ordinary addition will give the same result whether the operation is signed or unsigned.
It puzzles me that some of the oldest computers employed sign- magnitude notation when 2's (1's, 10's) complement would have needed fewer gates and fewer clock cycles. Perhaps an accommodation to the engineers' habits. -- gil
