GMP division plans

[Linas Vepstas]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 09:53:07PM +0200, Paul Zimmermann wrote:
> 
> I disagree. On the contrary I suggest to remove multiplication and to only
> provide squaring. Users who really want to perform non-square products can
> still compute them as [(a+b)^2-(a-b)^2] >> 2. Future versions of GMP might
> include some addsub instruction to make this computation very efficient.

I am finding this conversation confusing.

So are you saying that, in terms of performance and efficiency, its
faster to perform  [(a+b)^2-(a-b)^2] >> 2  than it is to perform a*b ??

If so, why aren't we doing this today ?
If not, then why would we get rid of something that's fast?

--linas