[sdiy] Tiny FPU chip

[Tom Arnold]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 10:01:46PM -0800, James Patchell wrote:
> Unless I missed something, I did not see anywhere what the computational 
> throughput was...looking at the product, my best guess is these guys used a 
> PIC micro controller and created firmware that does these 
> calculations...which means that anybody could basically do the 
> same.  Generally, all of those functions come with a standard C 
> compiler.  Unless I am really missing something I don't see, I can't figure 
> out where the value is....

Thats kinda what I'm assuming too, except that not many of the smaller PIC's
can handle 4mhz SPI.  Actually, I think that number is really close to zero.
But the label on the chip just screams Off The Shelf part doesnt it?

But it did get me thinking about the idea of using off the shelf FPU's (
which are now really cheap surplus ) with a microcontroller.  the Intel FPUs
dont lend themselves to ease of use, but I bet a 68881 could be abused...

I did email Micromega to see if they'd quote some performance specs.

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