As well as the practical details of barrel shifter implementation design that psykotic points out, older CPUs couldn't afford the space for a barrel shifter and implemented shifts as a sequence of one-bit shifts. So for instance the 8086 took 8 clock cycles plus another 4 cycles per bit shift, and on that kind of CPU it was definitely not as fast as an addition.
Incidentally there is a standard trick for integer division by constant which allows you to convert it into a series of 3 to 5 shift and add/subtract operations; any decent C compiler will implement this. _Hacker's Delight_ has the explanation of the algorithm, I think.
Incidentally there is a standard trick for integer division by constant which allows you to convert it into a series of 3 to 5 shift and add/subtract operations; any decent C compiler will implement this. _Hacker's Delight_ has the explanation of the algorithm, I think.