A floating-point unit (FPU, colloquially a math coprocessor) is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root.

<hardware> (FPU) A floating-point accelerator, usually in a single integrated circuit, possible on the same IC as the central processing unit. (1994-10-27)

<programming, mathematics> A number representation consisting of a mantissa, M, an exponent, E, and a radix (or "base"). The number represented is M*R^E where R is the radix. In science and engineering, exponential notation or scientific notation uses a radix of ten so, for example, the number 93,000,000 might be written 9.3 x 10^7 (where ^7 is superscript 7). In computer hardware, floating point numbers are usually represented with a radix of two since the mantissa and exponent are stored in binary, though many different representations could be used. The IEEE specify a standard representation which is used by many hardware floating-point systems. Non-zero numbers are normalised so that the binary point is immediately before the most significant bit of the mantissa. Since the number is non-zero, this bit must be a one so it need not be stored. A fixed "bias" is added to the exponent so that positive and negative exponents can be represented without a sign bit. Finally, extreme values of exponent (all zeros and all ones) are used to represent special numbers like zero and positive and negative infinity. In programming languages with explicit typing, floating-point types are introduced with the keyword "float" or sometimes "double" for a higher precision type. See also floating-point accelerator, floating-point unit. Opposite: fixed-point. (2008-06-13)

In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic using formulaic representation of real numbers as an approximation to support a trade-off between range and precision. For this reason, floating-point computation is often used in systems with very small and very large real numbers that require fast processing times.

A floating dock, floating pier or floating jetty is a platform or ramp supported by pontoons. It is usually joined to the shore with a gangway.

Hexadecimal floating point (now called HFP by IBM) is a format for encoding floating-point numbers first introduced on the IBM System/360 computers, and supported on subsequent machines based on that architecture,IBM System/360 Principles of Operation, IBM Publication A22-6821-6, Seventh Edition (January 13, 1967), pp.41-50IBM System/370 Principles of Operation, IBM Publication GA22-7000-4, Fifth Edition (September 1, 1975), pp.

Block floating point (BFP) is a method used to provide an arithmetic approaching floating point while using a fixed-point processor. BFP assigns a group of significands (the non-exponent part of the floating-point number) to a single exponent, rather than single significand being assigned its own exponent.

Extended precision refers to floating-point number formats that provide greater precision than the basic floating-point formats. defines extended precision format as "A format that extends a supported basic format by providing wider precision and range.

In computing, tapered floating point (TFP) is a format similar to floating point, but with variable-sized entries for the significand and exponent instead of the fixed-length entries found in normal floating-point formats. In addition to this, tapered floating-point formats provide a fixed-size pointer entry indicating the number of digits in the exponent entry.