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Yep, my spreadsheet example was not great. Your example of FPU-for-CAD is perhaps better at making the case that the FPU was once a specialized co-processor, bu
by robotresearcher 10y ago
Yep, my spreadsheet example was not great. Your example of FPU-for-CAD is perhaps better at making the case that the FPU was once a specialized co-processor, but of course is now considered an essential everyday component. The modern CPU evolved to support the set of workloads people found for them over time. They are now heterogeneous parallel systems that are really good at actual workstation and server workloads. They are quite specialized in that sense.
- zubat 10y agoThe FPU achieving mass adoption maps pretty well to the onset of "multimedia hype" (CDs, digital audio and video, and of course 3D game rendering). That content doesn't strictly need floating point, but it became an affordance along with 32-bit desktop architectures and their increased memory and storage.