A Division Algorithm for a Digital Differential Analyzer

This report describes a new digital differential analyzer (DDA) technique for computing equations of the form f(x) = c/x (c = constant), which was developed to solve a problem posed by the Systems Laboratory. The major advantages of this new method over conventional DDA methods are: a much smaller truncation error because only one integration is performed, and reduced size of the equipment, since it requires only one Y register and one time-shared adder. A digital differential analyzer (DDA) is commonly used to solve for particular solutions of a differential equation. When a DDA is used to compute algebraic equations, the same techniques are involved in the instrumentation, that is, the dependent variable f(x) is developed from some initial conditions. This procedure consists of two operations: 1) integrating the derivative of f(x), and 2) generating the derivative to be integrated.