A Low-Cost Binary Division Circuit for Digital Instrumentation

A simple low-cost "latched" division network is described which is capable of executing the "division by time" operation commonly required in many digital instrumentation applications. Typical of these are velocity and acceleration measurements. The division network which was implemented and is described here is capable of performing division with two 16-b numbers (1 b being the sign bit) and producing a 15-b answer within 4.0 μs (worst case delay). It uses a modified version of the restoring division technique and assumes positive numbers as input, although the modification to operate with negative numbers is possible. A comparison of this technique is made with a previously published design used in a tachometer. Results indicate that significant improvement is possible in both speed and hardware.