• PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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    7 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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      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.