---
title: "Daniel E. Atkins"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Daniel E. Atkins"
aliases: ["D. E. Atkins"]
first_seen: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["SRT division algorithm","Pentium FDIV bug","Intel Corporation","history of computing"]
seek_code_commit: "7d6d9ed"
---


Daniel E. Atkins is the author of a 1968 IEEE Transactions on Computers paper, "Higher-Radix Division Using Estimates of the Divisor and Partial Remainders," which formalized a higher-radix, table-driven division method later used across a generation of digital-computer arithmetic units.

In this vault, Atkins is cited — by Intel's own engineers, as their reference [2] — as the technical source for the "PD-plot" division method the Pentium implemented, the same method whose defective lookup table produced the [[claim-pentium-fdiv-bug-five-missing-srt-lookup-table-entries|Pentium FDIV bug]]. He is the genealogical layer beneath the [[entity-srt-division-algorithm|SRT algorithm]] itself: SRT names how the digit is chosen; Atkins's 1968 paper is Intel's own citation for the specific lookup-table formulation of that choice.

## References

- [[entity-srt-division-algorithm]]
- [[claim-pentium-fdiv-bug-five-missing-srt-lookup-table-entries]]