Implemented following Knuth's "Evaluation of Powers" chapter in TAOCP,
some extra complexity is needed to make sure there's no aliasing and
avoid allocating too many limbs.
A brief example to illustrate why the last point is important:
consider 10^123, since 10 is well within the limits of a single limb we
can safely say that the result will surely fit in:
⌈log2(10)⌉ bit * 123 = 492 bits = 7 limbs
A naive calculation using only the number of limbs yields:
1 limb * 123 = 123 limbs
The space savings are noticeable.
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