Modified straight division: A computer implementation of multiple-precision division

Abstract

The ‘Straight division’ algorithm is an in-place division technique that has been known in India as a mental computation technique. This technique is found to be suitable for implementing multiple-precision division on computers using existing single-precision operations. This paper presents some modifications carried out on this basic technique to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. It also discusses an implementation of multiple-precision division using this modified straight division technique on two different processor architectures. This is followed by an analysis of these implementations in comparison with other existing division techniques. It is found that the modified straight division is superior in performance to other known methods.