3 ms·

Back in the 90s, Intel ran a print advertisement for the Intel 387 portraying their competitors' math coprocessors as pocket calculators: https://i.pinimg.com/

• kens 6y ago
  That's an interesting ad, but a bit ironic given Intel's later Pentium floating point division bug. On the topic of using calculator chips as coprocessors, National Semiconductor introduced the MM57109 Number Cruncher Unit (that is the real name) in 1977. It was essentially a repackaged 12-digit scientific calculator chip, operating on binary-coded decimal values with values entered in Reverse Polish Notation. This chip was absurdly slow; a tangent, for instance, could take over a second. http://www.projects.scorchingbay.nz/dokuwiki/_media/electronic/datasheet/national/an-186_mm57109_interface_to_microprocessor.pdf http://www.projects.scorchingbay.nz/dokuwiki/_media/electron...