FPU
By Gabriel Torres on October 15, 2005

Floating Point Unit

Unit inside the processor (CPU) in charge of scientific math (a.k.a. floating point).

Up to the 386 the processor didn’t have this unit embedded. At that time you needed to install an external math co-processor (also called arithmetic co-processor) if you needed to perform scientific math (floating point math).

Originally at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/dictionary/term/81

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