Is MOD operation more CPU intensive than multiplication?

Question

Why is MOD operation more expensive than multiplication by a bit more than a factor of 2? Please be more specific about how CPU performs division operation and returns the result for MOD operation.

In the following example the threads each run for a second. The test was performed on a SPARC processor.

// multiplication
void someThread() {

    int a = 10234;
    while (true) {
        opers++;
        a = a * a;
        a++;
    }

    // opers ~ 26 * 10^6 in a sec.
}

// MOD
void someThread() {

    int a = 10234;
    while (true) {
        opers++;
        a = a % 10000007;
        a++;
    }

    // opers ~ 12 * 10^6 in a sec.
}

Answer 1

MOD is a division operation, not a multiplication operation. Division is more expensive than multiplication.

More information about the MOD operation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulo_operation