AFAIK hardware multipliers are not quite as dumb and work more like this though:

5*11 = 5*(8+2+1) = 5*8 + 5*2 + 5*1 = (5<<3) + (5<<1) + (5<<0)

...and then doing all this in parallel.

Instead of:

5*11 = 5+5+5+5+5+5+5+5+5+5+5

;)