A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root. Some FPUs can also perform various transcendental functions such as exponential or trigonometric calculations, but the accuracy can be low, so some systems prefer to compute these functions in software.
Collection of the x87 family of math coprocessors by Intel
Floating-point arithmetic
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents subsets of real numbers using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base.
Numbers of this form are called floating-point numbers.
For example, 12.345 is a floating-point number in base ten with five digits of precision:
An early electromechanical programmable computer, the Z3, included floating-point arithmetic (replica on display at Deutsches Museum in Munich).
Leonardo Torres Quevedo, in 1914 published an analysis of floating point based on the analytical engine
Konrad Zuse, architect of the Z3 computer, which uses a 22-bit binary floating-point representation
William Kahan, principal architect of the IEEE 754 floating-point standard