387 FPU Math CoProcessor Benchmarks & Comparison / Intel, Cyrix, IIT, Chips & ULSI

Comments · 393

• CA

  @cabasse_music · 5 years ago · pinned

  do you have a rapidcad? i'm curious where that would fall between the 386 and 486

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• SK

  @SkyOctopus1 · 5 years ago

  Oh the nostalgia.  I did my PhD designing maths co-processor hardware.  My rose-tinted glasses filter out the hideousness of having to design these things and now I can just appreciate the beauty in them.

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• MA

  @matt.604 · 5 years ago

  I remember in 1993ish when the AutoCAD ppl at work who were using older computers got upgraded with 387 co-pros.  It was a glorious day.

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• LA

  @lazibayer · 5 years ago

  Interesting to see that Cyrix nailed the fpu performance in the 387 era but got beaten up two generations later.

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• OZ

  @OzirisTechnologies · 5 years ago

  who knew that I would need to wait 30-ish years to see benchmarks regarding something I always questioned myself about. Thank you !

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• FR

  @freddyfredrickson · 5 years ago

  I remember all those advertisements for CPU with math coprocessor.

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• LE

  @legiran9261 · 5 years ago

  These chips were the Radeon Instinct MI 100 and Nvidia Tesla A100 from the late 80s / early 90s. Amazing how much this tech has progressed in 3 decades.

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• DX

  @DX4AB1OF · 5 years ago (edited)

  Finally this channel gets the traction that it deserves. All this content is incredibly interesting, and I’m not at all into collecting stuff. It’s just a superb way of explaining the fundamentals of micro architecture. (edit: typo) (edit 2: and what in the world is that EDM-meets-yodeling song? Googling Austria hits, yodel techno, etc. is going nowhere <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGQxZEYby0&amp;t=31">https://youtu.be/qaGQxZEYby0?t=31</a> )

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• RO

  @ronch550 · 3 years ago

  These old floating point chips make me appreciate the FPUs that come standard in today&apos;s modern CPUs, especially given how expensive these chips were back in the day. As a regular home PC user back then, these chips were nothing more than curiosities.

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• SO

  @soniclab-cnc · 5 years ago

  I had to get the 387 for AutoCAD 1.0 . The difference really was impressive for my old i386. &nbsp;Drawing in 3D was so very slow without it....painfully so.

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• SO

  @solar3mpire · 5 years ago

  Our first 386SX mentioned a Weitek co-processor

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• MA

  @MattExzy · 5 years ago

  &quot;One of my personal favorite units.&quot;

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