History
Coprocessors for floating-point arithmetic first appeared in desktop computers in the 1970s and became common throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Early 8-bit and 16-bit processors used software to carry out floating-point arithmetic operations. Where a co-processor was supported, floating-point calculations could be carried out many times faster. Math co-processors were popular purchases for users of computer-aided design (CAD) software and scientific and engineering calculations. Some floating-point units, such as the AMD 9511, Intel I8231 and Weitek FPUs were treated as peripheral devices, while others such as the Intel 8087, Motorola 68881 and National 32081 were more closely integrated with the CPU.
Another form of co-processor was a video display coprocessor, as used in the Atari 8-bit family, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and MSX home-computers, which were called "Video Display Controllers". The graphics processor chip in the Commodore Amiga series was known as the "Copper".
As microprocessors developed, the cost of integrating the floating point arithmetic functions into the processor declined. High processor speeds also made a closely integrated coprocessor difficult to implement. Separately packaged mathematics co-processors are now uncommon in desktop computers. The demand for a dedicated graphics co-processor has grown, however, particularly due to an increasing demand for realistic 3D graphics in computer games.
Read more about this topic: Coprocessor
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)