> back when Microsoft was developing their 32 bit Windows, they were all set to not save the x87 state during a context switch, effectively killing the x87 Do

> back when Microsoft was developing their 32 bit Windows, they were all set to not save the x87 state during a context switch, effectively killing the x87 Do you mean '64-bit Windows'? (When 32-bit Windows was being developed, killing x87 would have meant killing all hardware floating point on x86.)