On the use of continued fractions for digital computer arithmetic

Recently, there has been some interest in the use of continued fractions for digital hardware calculat ions. We require t h a t the coefficients of the continued fractions be integral powers of two. As a result well known continued fraction expansions of functions cannot be used. Methods of expansion of a large number of functions are presented. We show that the problem of selection of coeffiients of the continued fractions does not have practical solution i n most of the cases we have considered. We conjecture that the solution of a polynomial equation i s the only problem that can be solved in our formulation.

Duke Scholars

Author Kishor S. Trivedi Electrical and Computer Engineering