A novel floating-point online division algorithm

This paper describes a new online division (reciprocal) algorithm for (maximally) redundant floating-point numbers of arbitrary radix. The algorithm works for normalized, quasi-normalized, and pseudo-normailized numbers and can therefore be applied in chained online compuatations. The online delay of die proposed algorithm is the smallest reported so far. The algorithm consista of two steps: the first m digits of the result are generated by a simple table lookup method; the remaining n-m digits are generated by using an adapted Newton-Raphson iteration method. In the second step, the online digits are created by using a fast and simple selection mechanism.