Multiplication on a Z80 processor

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 22:09:56 +0100

The one thing computers are really good at is calculating. You might now expect that all CPUs are capable of the four basic arithmetic operations, but that isn’t the case. The first 8 bit processors were only able to add and subtract numbers, and even the subtraction was performed by adding the negated subtrahend. Multiplication and division instructions first appeared on 16 bit processors, albeit they were still very slow in the first generation.