Applications of 8087
The 8087 provides functions designed specifically to meet high-performance digital processing requirements. The trigonometric, logarithmic, and exponential functions of them are built into the coprocessor hardware. These functions are essential in scientific, engineering, navigational, or military applications. The 8087 also has features for business computing or business. The 8087 can handle binary coded decimal (BCD) numbers up to 18 bits, with rounding errors.
- 8087 is supporting the programming language, it can write the high-level language for 8086/8088 systems.
- The 8087 math coprocessor architecture is designed for high-performance numeric computing with general-purpose processing.
Data Formats of 8087
The 8087 is basically known as the Numeric Data Processor, but it’s also called a Math Co-processor. 8087 numeric data processor is also known as the Floating point unit. The 8087 is a co-processor that was designed to work with the Intel 8086/8088 microprocessors. It was used to enhance the performance of floating-point operations on these processors.
The 8087 consists of two major parts:
- Control Unit: This block is used to synchronize tasks between the main and coprocessors. The control unit receives the instruction’s opcode, then decodes the instruction’s opcode, and reads or writes the operands from memory. The control unit provides communication between the processor and memory.
- Numeric Execution Unit (NEU): The Control Unit (CU) consists of a data bus buffer, status, and control registers, and the Numeric Processing Unit (EU) consists of a stack of eight data registers, a microcode control unit, and programmable shifters. This block duplicates the functions performed by the microprocessor control unit and ALU.