Edition 5.0.5 of the GMP manual, in the section on mpn_mul_1, states: Don't call this function if S2LIMB is a power of 2; use `mpn_lshift' with a count equal to the logarithm of S2LIMB instead, for optimal speed. Of course, it would be more correct to write "base-2 logarithm" instead of "logarithm". -- Regards, Will