Floating Point Coprocessors
Beginning of paper
The designer of any microprocessor would like to extend its instruction
set almost infinitely but is limited by the quantity of silicon available (not
to mention the problems of testability and complexity). Consequently, a real
microprocessor represents a compromise between what is desirable and wh ....
Middle of paper
.... as
software to divide the tasks among them. A practical multiprocessing system
should be as simple as possible and require a minimum overhead in terms of both
hardware and software. There are various techniques of arranging a coprocessor
alongside a microprocessor. One technique is to provide the coprocessor with an
instruction interpreter and program counter. Each instruction fetched from
memory is examined by both the MPU and the coprocessor. If it is a MPU
instruction, the MPU executes it; ....
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Word count: 2861
Page count: 11 (approximately 250 words per page)
