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To: AB who wrote (26293)	5/3/1998 1:02:00 AM
From: Scott Sterling	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33344

> Looks like faster FPU's are the "feature du jour", even though they > are not used, AT ALL, by most programs. Anthony, Brakes are not used 95% of the time while driving, yet when I need to stop I am really glad that they were included on the car. Two or three years ago when most people had zero purpose for fast floating point there was a good case to be made for leaving out the FPU or using a weak one so that the cost could be reduced or that integer performance could be enhanced. I would say the consensus opinion is currently that even the lowest end CPUs are fast enough to run business apps, but that there is a noticeable difference between a fast FPU and a slow FPU on the apps that use them such as 3D games and mp3 compression. So even if I used one of these once or twice a month, I think the enhanced FPU is worth a few bucks extra. How much cost could an enhanced FPU possibly add to a sub $100 chip? Does anyone know? --Scott