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Gadgets · by Miguel Santos · 2026-10-19

The Intel 8087 chip: floating-point addition and subtraction

righto.com

Ken Shirriff dives into 8087 microcode again. His die-photo posts are always great.

74 sparks · 19 comments

Comments

Chinedu Adeyemi · 13 likes

cost matters a lot here, teh 8087 only makes sense if the numbers actually work out at scale

Quiet Otter · 14 likes

Same here, had the exact same experience

Tiago Costa · 7 likes

Can you share more details? Would love to try it

Sofía Hernández · 4 likes

Skeptical but curious about the 8087. Anyone got actual numbers or just vibes

Tola Ibrahim · 0 likes

Tbh I read twice and still not sure what I think

Rapid River · 2 likes

my experience with teh 8087 was mostly positive, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it yet

Sofía Hernández · 3 likes

my wallet just cried reading this

Olena Shevchenko · 0 likes

Thanks, that actually helped a lot

Ananya Rao · 0 likes

Not convinced about the 8087 tbh. I've seen this hype cycle before and it usually fizzles

Bianca Santos · 2 likes

Can you share more details? Would love to try it

Haruto Sato · 0 likes

the 8087 will be in a year and everybody will use it anyway lol

Diego García · 3 likes

I'd pay good money to see you debate that with my boss

Sophie Gagnon · 1 likes

disagree a bit, but I see where coming from

Imogen Clarke · 0 likes

Can someone explain the 8087 like I'm five? Feels like I missed a few chapters

Imogen Clarke · 6 likes

Can you share more details? Would love to try it

Rohan Mehta · 0 likes

Saving this thread, the 8087 is exactly what I needed to read today

Olena Shevchenko · 2 likes

Classic Monday energy

Camille Dubois · 0 likes

Honestly the 8087 is more interesting than I expected, been reading about it all morning

Zeynep Demir · 5 likes

Ok but who is going to do the maintenance, asking for a friend