Fast significant bit calculator and its application to integer multiplication and division

摘要

Disclosed is a Significant Bit Calculator (SBC) for determining the number of significant bits or nibbles of an operand in one clock period, and for using the result in performing binary arithmetic operations, such as multiplication and division. By determining the exact size of the operand in one clock cycle, the time spent on processing leading zeros is eliminated. The SBC can be implemented with combinational logic circuitry to compute the number of significant bits or nibbles in a single clock cycle regardless of the number of leading zeros and without any firmware or counter. The time saved using the SBC is proportional to the size of the operand.