floating-point unit

A floating point unit (FPU) is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root. Some systems (particularly older, microcode-based architectures) can also perform various "transcendental" functions such as exponential or trigonometric calculations, though in most modern processors these are done with software library routines.
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(FPU) A floating-point accelerator, usually in a single integrated circuit, possible on the same IC as the central processing unit.
(1994-10-27)