GCSE J277 Unit 1.

2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Name: Mahmud Rahman

Specification & learning objectives

By the end of this topic you will have studied:
• The units of data storage: Bit, Nibble, Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte
• How data needs to be converted into a binary format to be processed by a computer
• Data capacity and calculation of data capacity requirements
• How to convert positive denary whole numbers to binary (up to and including 8 bits) and vice versa
• How to add two binary integers together (up to and including 8 bits) and explain overflow errors which may occur
• How to convert denary whole numbers into 2-digit hexadecimal numbers and vice versa
• How to convert binary integers to their hexadecimal equivalents and vice versa
• Binary shifts
• The use of binary codes to represent characters and the term ‘character set’
• The relationship between the number of bits per character in a character set, and the number of characters which can be represented, e.g.: ASCII, Unicode
• How an image is represented as a series of pixels, represented in binary and what image metadata is
• The effect of colour depth and resolution on: The quality of the image, The size of an image file
• How sound can be sampled and stored in digital form
• The effect of sample rate, duration and bit depth on: The playback quality, The size of a sound file
• The need for compression
• Types of compression: Lossy, Lossless

Resources
We recommend the OCR endorsed text book from PG Online for use during your GCSE studies.
Craig'n'Dave videos for SLR 1.2
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Bit, nibble, byte, kilobyte & megabyte

Bit: 0 Binary digit. Boolean values: False or True.

Nibble: 0 1 0 1 4 bits. Half a byte. An encoded number for an LCD display.

Byte: 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 A 8 bits. A single character.

Kilobyte: 1024 which can be approximated to 103 or 1000 bytes. The symbol for a kilobyte is KB

You can store a few paragraphs of text in a single kilobyte. In the 1980s, a 5.25 inch floppy disk would store 160-360 kilobytes of data.

Megabyte: which can be approximated to 10⁶ or 1000

1024000 The symbol for a megabyte is MB
kilobytes

You can store a in a single megabyte. In the 1990s, a 3.5 inch floppy disk would store 1.44 megabytes of data.
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Gigabyte, terabyte & petabyte

Gigabyte: 10⁹ or 1000

1000000000 which can be approximated to The symbol for a gigabyte is GB
megabytes

You can store 12 hours of music in a single gigabyte. In the 1990s, a MiniDisc would store 1 gigabyte of data.

Terabyte: 10¹² or 1000

1000000000000 which can be approximated to The symbol for a terabyte is TB
gigabytes

You can store 1 million novels in a single terabyte. In 2018 hard disks in computers have terabytes of data capacity.

10000000000000 10¹⁵ or 1000

Petabyte: which can be approximated to The symbol for a petabyte is PB
00 terabytes

You can store 100 years of television in a single petabyte. The amount of data Google processes in an hour can be measured in petabytes.
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Units of data storage

Unit conversions:

Sophie has 1500 high resolution 5Mb photographs.

Bytes KB MB GB What size memory card in GB will she need as a
minimum to store these images?
6567 6.567 0.006567 0.000006567

7.5GB
130 0.13 0.00013 0.00000013

10700000 10700 10.7 0.0107 A portable video player stores films in a compressed
format on flash memory. Each film is 4.7GB.
How many films can a 32GB player store?
2300000 2300 2.3 0.0023

6
5000000 5000 5 0.005

1400000000 1400000 1400 1.4 A dashboard camera records video at 120MB per
second. How much storage is required in gigabytes for
30 seconds of footage?
50000000 50000 50 0.05

200000000 200000 200 0.2 3.6GB

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Units of data storage

The human brain 0.004MB of RAM in

stores 2,500,000GB Apple’s first computer in
of data. 1976.

= 2.5 PB = 4 KB
15.4PB video IBM’s Watson
uploaded to YouTube supercomputer
in 2012. 16TB RAM.

= 15400 TB = 0.016 PB

Large Hadron Collider All the DNA in a human

produces 0.47GB data per body cell is 1.5GB.
second.

= 470 MB = 1500 MB
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Why data needs to be converted into a binary format to be processed by a computer

Computers store data in binary (0 or 1) because: Electronic components are easier to manufacture and cheaper to make when there are only two states.

RAM, Hard disks, CDs, DVDs and flash drives all use binary to store data. In the case of RAM, flash chips within the
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Calculating the data capacity requirements

Typical examples of file sizes: File type Approximate size

1 page word processed file with no 0.1MB (100KB)

images
Postcard sized photograph 6MB

3 minute MP3 music file 6MB

1 minute compressed video file 50MB

Standard definition feature film 4000Mb (4GB)

High definition feature film 8000-15000Mb (8-15GB)

Typical examples using the data above:

A 100 page book with 30 postcard sized photos:

Photo album with 230 postcard sized photos and 40 half minute video clips:

A portable music player capable of holding 3000x3 minute songs and ¼ postcard sized track thumbnail images:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

How to convert positive denary whole numbers (0-255) into 8 bit binary numbers and vice
versa
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Adding two 8 bit binary integers and overflow errors.

Overflow errors can occur when adding binary numbers because:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Binary shifts

A left shift performs a: Multiplication by 2

A right shift performs a:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Converting from binary to hexadecimal equivalents and vice versa.

Denar Binary Hex
y
0

10

11

12

13

14

15
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Converting positive denary whole numbers (0-255) into 2 digit hexadecimal numbers and vice
versa

How to convert from denary to hexadecimal: How to convert from hexadecimal to denary:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Number conversions

Bi n 1 1 0 1
De
11011000

96 r y

ar y
D8 imal

01
na
Binary ec

01
xad

01001010
He

Binary
6A mal
5D
Hexadecimal

ci
Hexadecimal

De 11

ade
y
56 nar

na
De 6

Hex
ry
8

99 y
ar
Bin 111
00

001
Den
11

1
ary 1

AB
Bin 0000
Hexadecimal ar y

Hexadecimal
al
11 nary

im

He
xa F
0

De 130

FF
Bi

He 3
ec

y
1

ar
x
0 00

140 ry
d

01
Bin 0101
n
a
BE De

na
d
na

10
ecim
1

ary
20 ry

De
9
al

Denary
10 Binary 2B imal
11
00 10 10
ec
xad

01100000
He

Binary
y
nar
De 0
78
al
exa decim 4
H 8C imal 1 10
0
00 ec Bin 1110
00100

xad
Binar 0

11111111

0 e ary
B i 01 0 H

Hexadecimal
Binary
l

ry
ecima

na 1
na 1
ry 1
01

al
y

11 nary
e

im
1F

D 10

22
xa 12
1
ry

Bi

c
0
Hexad

na De

de
011
De 4 na
7 18 r y

e
0
Dena

H
ry
19 0
Denary
48
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Characters and character sets

Computers store and process all data in binary. Therefore all data including text, images and sounds must be represented with just 0’s and 1’s.

How my first name is stored in binary using the 8 bit Extended ASCII character set:

Letter Binary

My binary bracelet:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Characters and character sets

A character set is: All the characters that a computer can use.

ASCII is a 7 bit character set. This means you can represent 128 Extended ASCII is an 8 bit character set. This means you can represent 256

characters in that set because there are 2 7 permutations of 7 bits. characters in that set because there are 2 8 permutations of 8 bits.

Standard ASCII character set. Characters 32-127: Extended ASCII character set. Characters 128-255:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Characters and character sets

Unicode was introduced because

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Bitmap images

1 bit image:

In this image each pixel is stored in: bit.

Meta data
includes:

The file size can be

calculated as:

The file size for this

image is:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Bitmap images

2 bit image:

In this image each pixel is stored in: bits.

The file size for this

image is:

The colour palette

meta-data is:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Bitmap images

3 bit image:

In this image each pixel is stored in: bits.

The impact on file size of colour depth:

The impact on file size of resolution:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

How sound can be sampled and stored in digital form

101

100
Bit depth (3-bits)

011

010

001

000

Binary for the sound could be: bits.

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

The effect of doubling the bit rate on the quality of the sound and file size

1010
1001
1000
0111
Bit depth (4-bits)

0110
0101

0100

0011
0010
0001
0000

Binary for the sound could be: bits.

The quality has:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

The effect of doubling the sample rate and bit rate on the quality of the sound and file size

1010
1001
1000
0111
Bit depth (4-bits)

0110
0101

0100

0011
0010
0001
0000

Binary for the sound could be: bits.

The quality has:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Compression will

and is used because

Lossy compression loses some of the data when the file is compressed. This reduces the quality, but also significantly reduces file size.

Lossy compression is used for and cannot be used for

Lossless compression does not lose any of the data when the file is compressed. Instead, the data is encoded in a different way.

Lossless compression is used for and is less effective for

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Lossy compression

Lossy compression loses some of the data when the file is compressed. This reduces the quality, but significantly reduces file size.
With JPEG encoding below you can see that increasingly larger regions of the picture are drawn with the same colour as the compression increases.

100% quality: 80% quality: 60% quality:

2 3

40% quality: 20% quality: 2% quality:

4 5 6
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Lossless compression

An example of run-length lossless compression:

Colour palette:

You don’t need to

know about specific
compression
algorithms for exams.
This exercise is just so
you understand how
it could work.

Assuming the first 3 bits are the colour and the next 4 bits are the number of pixels of that colour:
The first two lines of the image encoded in binary are:

Uncompressed total bits: With lossless compression total bits:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Lossless compression

Assuming 3 bits for colour and 4 bits for number of pixels:

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Units of data storage

Case study:

Elizabeth is looking to upgrade her phone. She is choosing between model A and model B.

Model A Model B

Storage capacity 64GB 256GB

Camera 8 mega-pixel, 24bit colour 12 mega-pixel, 24 bit colour

1080p (2 mega-pixel) 4K HD (8 mega-pixel)

Video
at 24 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps at 24 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps

Consider that 32GB of data storage will be used for apps. Assume 50% compression.

Maximum number of
photographs that could be
stored on the phone:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Assessment Target: Overall grade:

Minimum expectations by the end of this unit

□ You should have learnt terms 30-60 from your GCSE Level Key Terminology during this unit.
□ You have completed all the pages of the workbook
□ Score 80% in the end of unit test.

Feedback
Breadth Depth Understanding

□ All aspects complete □ Excellent level of depth □ All work is accurate

□ Most aspects complete □ Good level of depth □ Most work is accurate

□ Some aspects complete □ Basic level of depth shown □ Some work is accurate

□ Little work complete □ Little depth and detail provided □ Little work is accurate

Comment & action Student response

GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Reflection & Revision checklist

Confidence Clarification
☹😐☺ I can explain the following units of storage: bit, nibble, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte
☹😐☺ I can explain why data needs to be converted into a binary format in order to be processed by a computer.
I can explain how to calculate data capacity requirements
☹😐☺ I can explain how to convert positive denary whole numbers (0-255) into 8 bit binary numbers and vice versa.
☹😐☺ I can explain how to add two 8 bit binary integers.
☹😐☺ I can explain what overflow is and why it might occur when performing binary addition.
☹😐☺ I can explain how to convert positive denary whole numbers (0-255) into 2 digit hexadecimal numbers and vice versa.
☹😐☺ I can explain how to convert binary integers to their hexadecimal equivalents and vice versa
☹😐☺ I can explain what a binary shift is and why I would use it.
☹😐☺ I can explain how binary codes are used to represented characters.
☹😐☺ I can explain what a character set is.
☹😐☺ I can explain the relationship between the number of bits per character in a character set and the number of characters it can represented.
☹😐☺ I can explain the difference between the ASCII and the Unicode character set.
My revision focus will need to be:
GCSE J277 Unit 1.2 | Memory and storage – part 2 Craig’n’Dave

Reflection & Revision checklist

Confidence Clarification
☹😐☺ I can explain how an image is represented as a series of pixels is represented in binary.

☹😐☺ I can explain what meta data is and provide some examples.

☹😐☺ I can explain the effect of colour depth and resolution on the size of an image file.

☹😐☺ I can explain how sound can be sampled and stored in a digital form.

☹😐☺ I can explain how the following factors affect the size of a sound file and the quality of its playback: sample rate

☹😐☺ I can explain how the following factors affect the size of a sound file and the quality of its playback: sample duration

☹😐☺ I can explain how the following factors affect the size of a sound file and the quality of its playback: bit depth

☹😐☺ I can explain the need for compression.

☹😐☺ I can explain what lossy compression is.

☹😐☺ I can explain what lossless compression is.

☹😐☺ I can explain the advantages and disadvantages of lossy vs lossless compression.
My revision focus will need to be: