Comment by kens

> Binary multiplication has not changed in millennia. Ancient Egyptians were using the same binary integer multiplication logic 5 millennia ago as ALUs do today.

It turns out that multiplication in modern ALUs is very different. The Pentium, for instance, does multiplication using base-8, not base-2, cutting the number of additions by a factor of 3. It also uses Booth's algorithm, so much of the time it is subtracting, not adding.