hardware multiply/divide functionality in CPUs
Richard
legalize at xmission.com
Mon Mar 7 17:47:53 CST 2011
In article <4D74F972.18273.17219F8 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
> There were math co-processor boards (AM9511, AM9512, for example) for
> S100 systems. ISTR that there was even a TRW bipolar (16x16? Huge
> chip that ran hot as a pistol) for the S100 bus.
TRW and Weitek both made hardware multiplier chips for digital signal
processing applications. Exactly when the chips were introduced, I
don't know, but they were certainly present in the mid 80s.
> All mainframes of the time that I'm aware of had floating-point
> multiply. Many had floating-point divide (or a mechanism for getting
> there). Many lacked integer multiply and divide.
The IBM 701 had hardware multiply. I'm not sure about divide. This
was 1953.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
More information about the cctalk
mailing list