Patent attributes
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that uses the Newton-Raphson technique to perform a division operation. During operation, the system receives a numerator a and a denominator b. The system then divides a by b by first using the Newton-Raphson technique to calculate 1/b, and then multiplying 1/b by a to produce the result a/b. While using Newton-Raphson technique to find 1/b, the system first obtains an initial estimate x0 for 1/b and then iteratively solves the equation xi+1=xi(2−bxi). Each iteration involves: (1) using a multiplier circuit to multiply b by xi to compute bxi; (2) performing a bit-wise complement operation on bxi to compute 2−bxi, whereby an additional pass through an adder circuit or a multiply/add circuit is not required to perform the subtraction operation. (3) The system then uses the multiplier circuit to multiply xi by 2−bxi to compute xi(2−bxi).
