Talk:Floating-point unit

when was it invented and by whom?

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Why was this page deleted? There's no talk history discussing it and it doesn't show up in the deletion log. It does need some cleanup, but I'm just going to restore it. Nkedel 00:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Should the second section be merged with coprocessor? Nkedel 02:03, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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The section on coprocessors is unnecessarily biased towards the x86. Many other chips until the early-mid 90s had separate coprocessors, even if they were not explicitly mentioned in the literature. MIPS comes to mind, but this was also true of the VAX and if memory serves HPPA. I can rewrite if necessary, but ideally someone with more specific knowledge than me would be better suited.

Examples of implementing SIMD using the FPU

The current comment that AMD64 is an example of a CPU architecture that uses the FPU to implement SIMD is technically correct, but may give an impression that this is only recently done. At the risk of being x86-centric, the example should any processors that implemented MMX or 3Dnow!, which dates back to the Pentium-MMX and K6. Calyth 06:51, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

illegal to export

There was a story (urban legend?) floating around my programming class, to the effect of: ... exporting floating point chips to certain countries was illegal and violates the terms of the CoCom ... CPU manufacturers specifically decided not to integrate FPUs on the CPU chip, but instead have separate CPU chips (that they could sell to those countries) and FPU chips ... after the law changed, making it legal to sell FPUs to those countries, CPU manufacturers immediately stopped making separate FPU chips and immediately began making integrated CPU+FPU chips. ...

Any truth to this story? If so, please mention the facts in the article. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 04:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]