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https://www.righto.com/2026/05/microcode-inside-intel-8087-floating.html
In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point chip, a co-processor that made floating-point operations up to 100 times faster. This chip was highly influential, and today most processors use the floating-point standard introduced by the 8087.
The 8087 uses complicated algorithms to accurately compute functions such as square roots, tangents, and exponentials. These algorithms are implemented inside the chip in low-level code called microcode. I'm part of a group, the Opcode Collective, that is reverse-engineering this microcode. In this post, I take a close look at the microcode for one of the 8087's instructions—FXCH—and explain how the microcode works. The FXCH (Floating-point Exchange) instruction exchanges two floating-point registers. You might expect this instruction to be trivial, but there's more going on than you might expect; the microcode uses 14 micro-instructions to implement the exchange instruction.
To explore the microcode, I opened up an 8087 chip and created a high-resolution image with a microscope. The large microcode ROM occupies a central position, holding the micro-instructions that control the chip. The microcode engine on the left steps through the microcode, handling jumps and subroutine calls. The bottom half of the chip is the "datapath", the circuitry that performs floating-point calculations; it is split into a 16-bit datapath for the number's exponent and a 64-bit datapath for the number's fractional part (also known as the significand).
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday June 01, @05:55PM
There are always problems with "first".
DEC was shilling the 11/34a back in '76 ('75? earlier press releases?) and delivered in '77 so they win by at least two years over your examples. I know this for a fact without even looking it up.
IBM was shipping hardware double precision in ye olde 7094 in 1962, almost two decades before Intel and AMD. The newfangled system360 also had hardware double precision floating point because it was IBM's first "360" does it all business and science computing system and if the 7094 did it, the 360 surely had to do it as a minimum for the 360. From what I've read the vacuum tube 709 had to use software libraries to do double precision so MAYBE IBM's first hardware double precision machine was delivered in 1962. I have not done a ton of retrocomputing with 709 emulator. I think I have a decent FORTRAN II for it somewhere. This was back in the IBSYS days, pre-MVS era on the 360. Old mainframes are so weird and so cool yet still very approachable by hobbyists .... at least on the software side, the hardware would be a bit beyond the scope of my basement LOL. My wife would be pissed if I installed a 7094 in the basement although on the bright side I wouldn't have to run the furnace in the winter.
I'm SURE other people shipped hardware double precision before the 7094. That couldn't have been an IBM patent or something, no.
Contemporary with the 8087. What does "first" mean, first press release or first delivered engineering sample that worked or first retail system shipped or ... It doesn't really mean anything when they were at most mere months apart from each other.
I will admit the 8232 thing is just before my time, right when I eas getting started in computers, and I don't understand why Intel licensed it to begin with. Some kind of avoidance of single sourcing I'd guess. If you throw enough money at a chip fab they will fab anything including a competitors product, assuming its legally licensed. Analog chips are similar. It seems like half the world fabbed National Semidesctructors chips at one time or another, but they originally invented the cool stuff...