hardware (FPA) Additional hardware to perform functions on
floating point numbers such as addition, multiplication,
logarithms,
exponentials,
trigonometric functions and various kinds of
rounding and error detection. A floating point accelerator often functions as a co-processor to the
CPU.
The term "floating-point accelerator" suggests a physically larger system, often an extra circuit board, whereas a "floating-point unit" is probably a single chip or even part of a chip.
(1994-12-01)