A chained-matrices approach for parallel computation of continued fractions and its applications

A chained-matrices approach for parallel computing thenth convergent of continued fractions is presented. The resulting algorithm computes the entire prefix values of any continued fraction inO(logn) time on the EREW PRAM model or a network withO(n/logn) processors connected by the cube-connectedcycles, binary tree, perfect shuffle, or hypercube. It can be applied to approximate the transcendental numbers, such as ande, inO(logm) time by usingO(m/logm) processors for a result withm-digit precision. We also use it to costoptimally solve the second-order linear recurrence, the polynomial evaluation, the recurrence of vector norm, the general class of recurrence equation defined by Kogge and Stone (1973), and the generalmth order linear recurrence. It is easy to implement because there are only some matrix multiplications and a division operation involved.This work was supported in part by National Science Council of the Republic of China under Contract NSC 77-0408-E002-09.