Methods are provided to perform area summation of various subsections of data values in a regular input array of one or several dimensions and varying sizes. The summation is achieved by adding up values from a ripmap of partial sums, where the partial sums are computed from the input array using a binary reduction method. According to such embodiments, the generation of the ripmap of partial sums will employ several binary reduction stages. Within each stage, a reduction operator is used that adds two elements along the respective direction. This is repeated until the output is only one element wide in the respective direction. The addresses of partial sums in the ripmap may subsequently be computed using a binary analysis of the target subsections in order to choose those partial sum values for a desired area that results in the desired area sum using an optimal number of data fetches.