• PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      interesting, so does the computer have a special “base 10” ALU that somehow implements division without bit shifting?

      • nybble41@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        7 months ago

        In general integer division is implemented using a form of long division, in binary. There is no base-10 arithmetic involved. It’s a relatively expensive operation which usually requires multiple clock cycles to complete, whereas dividing by a power of two (“bit shifting”) is trivial and can be done in hardware simply by routing the signals appropriately, without any logic gates.

        • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          In general integer division is implemented using a form of long division, in binary.

          The point of my comment is that division in binary IS bitshifting. There is no other way to do it if you want the real answer. You can estimate, you can round, but the computational method of division is done via bitshifting of binarary expansions of numbers in an ALU.