Inside the Intel 8087 chip: floating-point addition and subtraction

· Adafruit Industries Blog · Oct. 28, 2026, 2:21 p.m.
Summary
This blog post by Ken Shirriff delves into the workings of the Intel 8087 math coprocessor, focusing on its floating-point addition and subtraction capabilities. It highlights how the 8087 significantly increased computational speed on the IBM PC, performing additions approximately 100 times faster than software emulation on the 8086. The post features detailed insights alongside photographs of the chip's architecture.
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