Monolithic floating-point processors streamline microcomputer design. (technology update)

EDN, June, 1988 by Fleming, Tarlton

Monolithic floating-point processors streamline microcomputer design Floating-point math has become an essential capability for standard microprocessor families, largely because an extensive and growing base of microcomputer systems must do massive amounts of numerical computation at high speed. Although any [mu]P can process floating-point numbers when supplied with the appropriate software, the execution is much too slow for applications such as 3-D graphics, linear programming, or CAD simulations. Just as system designers in general have found that the advent of RISC-based [mu]Ps has added a variety of products to the general [mu]P marketplace, so designers of numerically intensive applications now face a marketplace for monolithic and multichip floating-point...

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