Laan Tungir on Nostr: In grade-school, I found division harder than multiplication. I thought it was just ...

In grade-school, I found division harder than multiplication.

I thought it was just me. It wasn't.

Division takes more energy to do than multiplication does.

How much more energy? It depends on how you design the computer. Modern computers are optimized for multiplication over division so not quite fair to use them to judge.

But, if you were to make a simple computer from only NAND gates (a fundamental computing building block in our universe) to multiply or divide a 2 bit number (0-3)

For a division computer you need ~ 40 NAND gates.
For a multiplication computer you need - 13 NAND gates.

40/13 = ... ugh division ... too hard ... can't do ...

This is how much more chip space and energy division takes than multiplication.

Smart programmers avoid the more expensive operations like division when they can.

It is this fundamental cost difference between different mathematical operations that allows some forms of cryptography to exist in our universe, and why you can be assured of it.