The 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

The 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.