Your notes Units of Data Storage What are units of data storage? A unit of data is a term given to describe different amounts of binary digits stored on a digital device These are the units you need to know for IGCSE:
Unit Symbol Value
Bit b 1 or 0
Nibble 4b
Byte B 8B
Kibibyte KiB 1024 B (210)
Mebibyte MiB 1,048,576 KB (220)
Gibibyte GiB 1,073,741,824 MB (230)
Tebibyte TiB 1,099,511,626,776GB (240)
Megabyte vs Mebibyte 1 kibibyte = 1024 bits - binary prefixes (to the power of 2) 1 kilobyte = 1000 bits - decimal prefixes (to the power of 10)
Converting between units
It is often a requirement of the exam to be able to convert between different units of data, for example bytes to mebibytes (larger) or kibibytes to bytes (smaller) This process involves division, moving up in size of unit and multiplication, moving down in size of unit
When dealing with all units bigger than a byte we use multiples of 1024 (210) For example, 2000 kibibytes in mebibytes would be 2000 / 1024 = 1.95 MiB and 2 tebibytes in Your notes gibibytes would be 2 * 1024 = 2048 GiB When dealing with bits and bytes the same process is used with the value 8 as there are 8 bits in a byte For example, 24 bits in bytes would be 24 / 8 = 3 B and 10 bytes in bits would be 10 * 8 = 80 b Unit
Your notes Calculating File Sizes How do you calculate the size of a bitmap image? Calculating the size of a bitmap image can be carried out with either of the following formulas: Resolution x colour depth Image width x image height x colour depth
Example Image Files
(Resolution) x (Colour Depth)
Size of bitmap image =
Resolution 250,000 Resolution = width x height
Colour Depth 24 bits (3 bytes) 24 bits = 3 bytes
250,000 x 24 = 6,000,000 bits
(bit to bytes) /8 750,000 bytes (bytes to KiB) /1024 732 KiB
Compression Your notes The Need For Compression What is compression? Compression is reducing the the size of a file so that it takes up less space on secondary storage The impact of compression is: Less storage space required Less bandwidth required Shorter transmission time Compression can be achieved using two methods, lossy and lossless
Lossy Compression What is lossy compression? Lossy compression is when data is lost in order to reduce the size on secondary storage Lossy compression is irreversible Lossy can greatly reduce the size of a file but at the expense of losing quality Lossy is only suitable for data where reducing quality is acceptable, for example images, video and sound In photographs, lossy compression will try to group similar colours together, reducing the amount of colours in the image without compromising the overall quality of the image
Data has been removed and the overall quality has been reduced, however it is acceptable as it is difficult to visually see a difference Your notes Lossy compressed photographs take up less storage space which means you can store more and they are quicker to share across a network Lossless Compression What is lossless compression? Lossless compression is when data is encoded in order to reduce the size on secondary storage Lossless compression is reversible, the file can be returned to its original state Lossless can reduce the size of a file but not as dramatically as lossy Lossless can be used on all data but is more suitable for data where a loss in quality is unacceptable, for example documents In a document, lossless compression algorithms such as run length encoding (RLE) can be used to analyse the contents looking for patterns and repetition.
What is run length encoding?
Run length encoding (RLE) is a form of lossless data compression that condenses identical elements into a single value with a count For a text file, "AAAABBBCCDAA" is compressed to "4A3B2C1D2A" The string has four 'A's, followed by three 'B's, two 'C's, one 'D', and two 'A's RLE is used in bitmap images to compress sequences of the same colour For example, a line in an image with 5 red pixels followed by 3 blue pixels could be represented as "5R3B"
In the image above, lossless compression is automatically applied to document formats such as DOCX and PDF with a different rate of success When you open a lossless compressed document the decompression process reverses the algorithms and returns the data back to its original state Lossless compressed documents take up less storage space which means you can store more and they are quicker to share across a network
WORKED EXAMPLE An email is sent containing a sound file. Lossy compression is used to compress the sound file. Explain two reasons why using lossy compression is beneficial. [4] How to answer this question What are the differences between lossy and lossless? Can you state two differences? [2 marks] Can you say why each point is a benefit? [2 marks] Answer
