stored instructions and data in digital computers consists of
Computer data storage Data are encoded by assigning a bit pattern to each character, digit, or multimedia object. Many standards exist for encoding (e.g., character encodings like ASCII, image encodings like JPEG, video encodings like MPEG-4).
Central processing unit The actual mathematical operation for each instruction is performed by a combinational logic circuit within the CPU's processor known as the arithmetic logic unit or ALU. In general, a CPU executes an instruction by fetching it from memory, using its ALU to perform an operation, and then storing the result to memory. Beside the instructions for integer mathematics and logic operations, various other machine instructions exist, such as those for loading data from memory and storing it back, branching operations, and mathematical operations on floating-point numbers performed by the CPU's floating-point unit (FPU).[59]