ABSTRACT
Floating-point division performs two operations in parallel: fraction division and exponent subtraction. This chapter presents fraction division can be accomplished using any of the methods on fixed-point division. Divide overflow is determined in the same way as in fixed-point division; that is, if the high-order half of the dividend is greater than or equal to the divisor, then divides overflow occurs. Both operands are checked for a value of zero. If the dividend is zero, then the exponent, quotient, and remainder are set to zero. If the divisor is zero, then the result is infinity and the operation is terminated. The chapter also presents numerical examples using the sequential shift-subtract/add restoring division method with 4-bit divisors and 8-bit dividends. Since the division process involves one n-bit divisor and one 2n-bit dividend, a count-down sequence counter, count, is set to a value that represents the number of bits in the divisor.
