8-4. Multiplication by Constants
It is nearly a triviality that one can multiply by a constant with a sequence of shift left and add instructions. For example, to multiply x by 13 (binary 1101), one can code
where r gets the result.
In this section, left shifts are denoted by multiplication by a power of 2, so the above plan is written r ← 8x + 4x + x, which is intended to show four instructions on the basic RISC and most machines.
What we want to convey here is that there is more to this subject than meets the eye. First of all, there are other considerations besides simply the number of shift’s and add’s required to do a multiplication by ...
Get Hacker's Delight now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
