We present an approach to reducing the average number of signal transitions (T,,) in the design of sign-detection and comparison of magnitudes. Our approach reduces T
av from 21n/8 (n-operand precision in bits) to 4.5 in the case of iterative implementation, and from about n to roughly k+n/2
k-1 in the tree network implemented with k-bit modules. We also discuss comparison of
... [Show full abstract] small numbers. The approach is applicable to other arithmetic problems