40 years of Floating Point Hardware

[Phillip Stevens]

It is coming to the end of 2019, and I was just noting the manufactured date on my FPU (APU), being 1979.

So the 40th anniversary of the manufacture of my Am9511A-1DC has passed.

  

So I thought it would be useful to make a short video before the year passes.

CPU World lists some facts about the Am9511, but I've also assembled a lot of information at z88dk techdocs.

The best history of the Am9511 family is from the CPU Shack.

The floating point format used by the Am9511 was derived from the Lawrence Livermore Research Floating-Point library from 1975.

Then, the number format was modified slightly to comply with the original IEEE754 Floating Point,

and a new device Am9512 was produced (but it didn't sell very well).

Anyway, the end of me feeling nostalgic for this year.

Merry Christmas all.

P.

[Wayne Hortensius]

And here's a callow youth, just having passed its 34th birthday. Oh, what I paid for this chip back then!

And Merry Christmas all. We're already halfway out of the dark.