As far as I know you can do stuff like dynamic linking the right libraries as needed, or use different code paths / function points / virtual functions for thos

As far as I know you can do stuff like dynamic linking the right libraries as needed, or use different code paths / function points / virtual functions for those instructions. Linux on ARM used to have an ABI called OABI which would assume the CPU had FPU support, in case it didn't the kernel would catch the exception, perform the FPU operation in the kernel and return the result back to the program. This ended up being incredible slow however, with performance penalties for hardfpu machines as well. The new ABI (EABI) requires that the binary be built either for soft or hard float, which no longer requires the kernel to get involved.