why shift instruction can be used to mutiply by powers?
Most computers use a "shift and add" algorithm for multiplying small integers. [ Both base 2 long multiplication and base 2 peasant multiplication reduce to this same algorithm.
In base 2, multiplying by the single digit of the multiplier reduces to a simple series of logical AND operations. Each partial product is added to a running sum as soon as each partial product is computed. Most currently available microprocessors implement this or other similar algorithms (such as Booth encoding) for various integer and floating-point sizes in hardware multipliers or in microcode.
On currently
available processors, a bit-wise shift instruction is faster than a multiply instruction and can be used to multiply (shift left) and divide (shift right) by powers of two. Multiplication by a constant and division by a constant can be implemented using a sequence of shifts and adds or subtracts. ]
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jher000|Points 6160|
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Asked 10/26/2011 10:43:16 PM
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