Back وحدة الفاصلة العائمة Arabic FPU Catalan Matematický koprocesor Czech Gleitkommaeinheit German Μονάδα Κινητής Υποδιαστολής Greek Unidad de coma flotante Spanish واحد ممیز شناور Persian Matematiikkasuoritin Finnish Unité de calcul en virgule flottante French יחידת נקודה צפה HE
A floating-point unit (FPU), numeric processing unit (NPU),[1] colloquially math coprocessor, is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers.[2] Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root. Some FPUs can also perform various transcendental functions such as exponential or trigonometric calculations, but the accuracy can be low,[3][4] so some systems prefer to compute these functions in software.
In general-purpose computer architectures, one or more FPUs may be integrated as execution units within the central processing unit; however, many embedded processors do not have hardware support for floating-point operations (while they increasingly have them as standard).
When a CPU is executing a program that calls for a floating-point operation, there are three ways to carry it out:
- A floating-point unit emulator (a floating-point library in software)
- Add-on FPU hardware
- Integrated FPU (in hardware)
- ^ "Intel 80287XL Numeric Processing Unit". computinghistory.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
- ^ Anderson, Stanley F.; Earle, John G.; Goldschmidt, Robert Elliott; Powers, Don M. (January 1967). "The IBM System/360 Model 91: Floating-Point Execution Unit". IBM Journal of Research and Development. 11 (1): 34–53. doi:10.1147/rd.111.0034. ISSN 0018-8646.
- ^ Dawson, Bruce (2014-10-09). "Intel Underestimates Error Bounds by 1.3 quintillion". randomascii.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2020-01-16.
- ^ "FSIN Documentation Improvements in the "Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual"". intel.com. 2014-10-09. Archived from the original on 2020-01-16. Retrieved 2020-01-16.