The Intel 8087, announced in 1980, was the first floating-point coprocessor

Coprocessor

A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, or encryption. By offloading processor-intensive tasks from the main processor,...

 for the 8086

Intel 8086

The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...

 line of microprocessors. It had 45,000 transistors and was manufactured as a 3 μm depletion load HMOS

HMOS

Depletion-load nMOS/NMOS is a form of nMOS logic family which uses depletion-mode n-type MOSFETs as load transistors as a method to enable single voltage operation and achieve greater speed than possible with pure enhancement-load devices...

 circuit. (The 8231 was in fact older, but designed for the 8080

Intel 8080

The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility...

.) The 8087 was built to be paired with the Intel 8088

Intel 8088

The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however...

 or 8086 microprocessors. Its purpose was to speed up computations on demanding applications involving floating-point arithmetic, such as addition

Addition

Addition is a mathematical operation that represents combining collections of objects together into a larger collection. It is signified by the plus sign . For example, in the picture on the right, there are 3 + 2 apples—meaning three apples and two other apples—which is the same as five apples....

, subtraction

Subtraction

In arithmetic, subtraction is one of the four basic binary operations; it is the inverse of addition, meaning that if we start with any number and add any number and then subtract the same number we added, we return to the number we started with...

, multiplication

Multiplication

Multiplication is the mathematical operation of scaling one number by another. It is one of the four basic operations in elementary arithmetic ....

, division

Division (mathematics)

right|thumb|200px|20 \div 4=5In mathematics, especially in elementary arithmetic, division is an arithmetic operation.Specifically, if c times b equals a, written:c \times b = a\,...

, and square root

Square root

In mathematics, a square root of a number x is a number r such that r2 = x, or, in other words, a number r whose square is x...

, but it could also be used for transcendental function

Transcendental function

A transcendental function is a function that does not satisfy a polynomial equation whose coefficients are themselves polynomials, in contrast to an algebraic function, which does satisfy such an equation...

s such as exponential

Exponential function

In mathematics, the exponential function is the function ex, where e is the number such that the function ex is its own derivative. The exponential function is used to model a relationship in which a constant change in the independent variable gives the same proportional change In mathematics,...

, logaritmic or trigonometric calculations.