Editing Floating-point unit (section)

== {{anchor|Floating-point emulation}}Floating-point library ==
{{wikibooks|Floating Point/Soft Implementations}}
{{wikibooks|Embedded Systems/Floating Point Unit}}

Some floating-point hardware only supports the simplest operations: addition, subtraction, and multiplication. But even the most complex floating-point hardware has a finite number of operations it can support{{snd}}for example, no FPUs directly support [[arbitrary-precision arithmetic]].

When a CPU is executing a program that calls for a floating-point operation that is not directly supported by the hardware, the CPU uses a series of simpler floating-point operations. In systems without any floating-point hardware, the CPU [[Emulator|emulate]]s it using a series of simpler [[fixed-point arithmetic]] operations that run on the integer [[arithmetic logic unit]].

The software that lists the necessary series of operations to emulate floating-point operations is often packaged in a floating-point [[library (computing)|library]].