80 bits always seemed a strange choice for floating point, but as soon as you said there’s a 16-bit exponent and a 64-bit fraction part, it made sense.
I assume microcode was a choice for both ease of development/testing/changes and saving die space. Would there come a point later on where performance could be gained by converting the microcode into a full set of discrete logic, or is that not worth the effort?
I assume microcode was a choice for both ease of development/testing/changes and saving die space. Would there come a point later on where performance could be gained by converting the microcode into a full set of discrete logic, or is that not worth the effort?