Floating-point Library
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Some floating-point hardware only supports the simplest operations—addition, subtraction, and multiplication. But even the most complex floating-point hardware has a finite number of operations it can support—for example, none of them directly support arbitrary-precision arithmetic.
When a CPU is executing a program that calls for a floating-point operation not directly supported by the hardware, the CPU uses a series of simpler floating-point operations. In systems without any floating-point hardware, the CPU emulates it using a series of simpler fixed-point arithmetic operations that run on the integer arithmetic logic unit.
The software that lists the necessary series of operations to emulate floating-point operations is often packaged in a floating-point library.
Read more about this topic: Floating-point Unit
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