• Kairos@lemmy.today
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    6 months ago

    No the correct way is to use the proper fucking metric standard. Use Mi or Gi if you need it. We have computers that can divide large numbers now. We don’t need bit shifting.

    • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Hey how is “bit shifting” different then division? (The answer may surprise you).

        • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

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

          • nybble41@programming.dev
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            6 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.