> People who really wanted an hardware floating point unit in 1991 could buy one. The only people who could possibly want one back then would have been scientis

> People who really wanted an hardware floating point unit in 1991 could buy one. The only people who could possibly want one back then would have been scientists (as per Intel understanding of the market). They were marketed as "Math CoProcessor". Performance were average and price was outrageous (200 USD in 1993 equivalent to 350 USD in 2016.). As a result, sales were mediocre. Actually, that's only partly true. My father owned a company that outfitted large manufacturing shops (MI company, you can imagine who his customers were). As a result, he used AutoCAD. The version of AutoCAD he used had a hard requirement on the so-called "Math Co-processor", so he ended up having to purchase one and install it himself. That was my first taste of taking a computer apart and upgrading it and I credit that small move with my becoming interested in building PCs, which led to my dad and I starting a business in the 90s doing that for individuals and businesses. There were definitely more reasons for that kind of add-on than just scientific fields; anyone in the computer aided drafting world at that time needed one as well.