CPU Architecture and floating-point math

Posted by Jo-Herman Haugholt on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Jo-Herman Haugholt
Published on 2011-11-21T13:07:41Z Indexed on 2011/11/21 18:08 UTC
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math

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optimization

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cpu

I'm trying to wrap my head around some details about how floating point math is performed on the CPU, trying to better understand what data types to use etc.

I think I have a fairly good understanding of how integer math is performed. If I've understood correctly, and disregarding SIMD, a 32-bit CPU will generally perform integer math at at least 32-bit precision etc.

Is it correct that floating-point math is dependent on the presence of a FPU? And that the FPU on the x86 is 80-bit, so floating point math is performed at this precision unless using SIMD? What about ARM?

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