64
So many new friends, how do I be normal??
(hexbear.net)
Hexbear Meta Community
Posts should be a a Proposal (idea for changing the site), Feedback (regarding non-technical aspects of the site, for technical please use https://hexbear.net/c/feedback), or Appeals (regarding admin/moderator actions).
Discussion regarding these will be within comments under the post, appeals and feedback that is resolve may be removed as well as duplicate posts.
The following behavior will result in mod action:
People that are frequently making vague posts or comments.
People that are hostile, taking the least charitable interpretation or engaging in bad-faith
People that are maliciously trying to stir up drama
I legit didn't know x87 was a real thing until you made that ama post a few days ago lol
Happy to have increased your computer history knowledge!
If you mostly touch modern computers, it's not surprising that you didn't know, because Intel's x87 floating-point co-processor is mostly a thing of the past. Since the i486, the floating-point has been integrated into the CPU rather than being a separate chip. You can still issue x87 floating-point instructions to the i486, or even to a modern Intel CPU, though! Nowadays, if you want floating-point stuff, you (or the compiler that compiles your program) will probably use SSE instructions instead. But I heard that some applications where the precision is very important still use x87 because it internally represents the numbers as 80 bit instead of 64 bit.
I forget; was it the 80387 or the 80487 that was just a full-blown DX (as in, FPU included on the die) version of its 80_86SX counterpart with only subtle differences in the pinout so it could disable the onboard main/SX processor socket?
Edit: Found it! It was the i487 SX:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwkZz4uwcuQ