(FPA) Additional hardware to perform functions on
floating point numbers such as addition, multiplication,
logarithms, exponentials,
trigonometric functions and
various kinds of
rounding and error detection. A floating
point accelerator often functions as a co-processor to the
CPU.
The term "floating-point accelerator" suggests a physically
larger system, often an extra circuit board, whereas a
"floating-point unit" is probably a single chip or even part
of a chip.