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My first PC was a 386 with a 387 floating point co-processor. [1] Intel chips have only had floating point support as default since 1989 with the 486DX [2] and

My first PC was a 386 with a 387 floating point co-processor. [1] Intel chips have only had floating point support as default since 1989 with the 486DX [2] and still had a cheaper non-floating point version in the 486SX [3] Motorola 68000 was similarly constrained [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X87 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486DX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486DX [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486SX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486SX

dalke 11y ago
Which would suggest that on-chip floating point integration is important enough, across a wide range enough range of applications, to justify the expense.
- atemerev 11y ago
  That was before GPUs. GPU is a modern co-processor.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Is this just a terminology difference? The suggestion was to remove floating point from "general-purpose CPUs and leave it to GPUs". If GPUs are integrated into the CPU in the same way that a math-coprocessor is now part of the CPU, then the future "CPU" will be what we now think of as the "CPU + GPU" combination.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > That was before GPUs. GPU is a modern co-processor. And the trend of on-die GPUs as part of the CPU -- the same thing that happened with FPUs before them -- has already begun. Again showing that on-chip floating point integration (even of the kind of floating-point operations supported by GPUs as distinct from the functions already inherent in CPUs that have integrated FPUs) is important enough, across a wide range enough range of applications, to justify the expense.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    Great! As long as I can simply define a local variable, structure member, or array element of floating point type, and use it, I don't care where the circuits lie. Just don't make me use some special API or compiler extensions to get to the GPU just so I can do some everyday calculation.

dalke 11y ago

Which would suggest that on-chip floating point integration is important enough, across a wide range enough range of applications, to justify the expense.

atemerev 11y ago
That was before GPUs. GPU is a modern co-processor.
- dalke 11y ago
  Is this just a terminology difference? The suggestion was to remove floating point from "general-purpose CPUs and leave it to GPUs". If GPUs are integrated into the CPU in the same way that a math-coprocessor is now part of the CPU, then the future "CPU" will be what we now think of as the "CPU + GPU" combination.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > That was before GPUs. GPU is a modern co-processor. And the trend of on-die GPUs as part of the CPU -- the same thing that happened with FPUs before them -- has already begun. Again showing that on-chip floating point integration (even of the kind of floating-point operations supported by GPUs as distinct from the functions already inherent in CPUs that have integrated FPUs) is important enough, across a wide range enough range of applications, to justify the expense.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Great! As long as I can simply define a local variable, structure member, or array element of floating point type, and use it, I don't care where the circuits lie. Just don't make me use some special API or compiler extensions to get to the GPU just so I can do some everyday calculation.