Parallelism between CPU and FPU

[matic]

Posted on September 09, 2016 at 22:14

Hi.

Is it possible to do some computation in parallel in CPU (with integers) and FPU (with floats)?

Probably not, because both units need their own instructions to perform a math operation and the instructions can only be executed sequentially one after another.

[AvaTar]

Posted on September 10, 2016 at 10:11

I would consult the

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0439c/DDI0439C_cortex_m4_r0p1_trm.pdf

or similar for such details.

Since a normal cycle count figure is given for FPU instructions as well, I assume they are basically executed sequentially with ''normal'' instructions, even if the FPU is implemented as a kind of coprocessor.