Bit-Shifting Tricks in Processors

Your computer is playing tricks on you. I told my processor to take the number

one and just 'rotate' it one spot to the right. The '1' that fell off the end didn't

disappear. It wrapped all the way around to the very front, turning a simple

1 into a massive number over two billion. This isn't a bug; it's a feature called

Rotate Right. Processors use these simple bit-shifting tricks for everything. An 'Arithmetic Shift'

on a negative number keeps it negative, which is how it divides by two. It’s not always

doing complex math; sometimes, it’s just a clever shell game with ones and zeros.