Why do typical integer dividers (restoring or non-restoring, producing one quotient bit at a time) tend to be slower than multipliers?

Answer: B. Each quotient bit depends on the previous one

Multiplication generates all partial products at once and sums them in parallel with structures such as Wallace trees. A divider working like long division decides each quotient bit by checking whether the divisor can be subtracted from the remainder, then uses the new remainder for the next bit, so every step depends on the previous one. It advances only one or a few bits per cycle and may take dozens of cycles. Some designs instead compute the reciprocal by Newton's method and multiply. Division does not produce more result bits.

• A. The quotient has no more bits than a product.
• B. Correct. Each bit depends on the previous result, hindering parallelism.
• C. Integer dividers can certainly be built.