How do you calculate the additive inverse of a binary number?

1 Answer
May 20, 2017

Take the 1's complement and add 1

Explanation:

The exact form depends on the word size you are using for your binary numbers.

A 1's complement is formed by flipping every bit - i.e. apply the "not" operator to every bit.

For example, with a 32 bit word, the 1's complement of 10100 is:

1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1110 1011

Then add 1 to get:

1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1110 1100