[cairo] [Pixman] Floating point API in Pixman

[Jonathan Morton]

On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 17:12 +0200, Jean-Claude Repetto wrote:
> Only high-end ARM processors of the most recent family (ARM-11) have a
> FPU.

Even that is not an accurate statement:

FPU co-processor cores are available all the way back to at least ARMv3
(ARM6 family) which is virtually prehistoric.  If I looked hard enough
on eBay, I could find an add-on card for my old RiscPC, which has an
ARM610 (just 35000 transistors!) and was made in 1994.  Intel were busy
replacing faulty Pentiums at the time.

The "most recent family" is the Cortex-A series, ie. A5, A8 and A9.  FPU
and NEON support is virtually standard on this family.  If you are
talking about modern ARM-based tablets and phones and, heaven forbid,
laptops, you'll get one of these.  The iPhone started with an ARM11
which nevertheless had an FPU attached.

However, I do acknowledge that ARM9 and ARM11 cores were and are
frequently produced without FPUs, and that finding an FPU attached to an
ARM7 core is rather unusual.

-- 
------
From: Jonathan Morton
      jonathan.morton at movial.com