Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Mon Jun 28 22:14:43 2004

> Then there are special cases: the Cray and Alpha integer units, which
> don't offer divide at all. Instead, you're supposed to multiply by
> the reciprocal of the divisor. This works well, because you can
> actually do that faster than the straightforward one bit at a time
> division even if you have to calculate the reciprocal at runtime.

Do you know how this is done (at least the fancy ways of doing it)? I
assume there are shortcuts, as the Cray 1/x pipes were not hugely long
compared with the other pipes (there has to be some magic somewhere).

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Mon Jun 28 2004 - 22:14:43 BST