Intel created a series of floating-point coprocessors for the x86 called the x87. In addition to supporting IEEE single and double precision numbers, it also supported an 80-bit extended precision number. Some C compilers (e.g. clang) mapped this to the long double type in C, but others (e.g. MSVC) didn't. The 80-bit floating-point format was widely available by 1984, [25] after the development of C, Fortran and similar computer languages, which initially offered only the common 32- and 64-bit floating-point sizes. On the x86 design most C compilers now support 80-bit extended precision via the long double type, and this was specified in the C99 / C11 standards (IEC 60559 floating-point arithmetic (Annex F)). Compilers on x86 for other languages often support extended precision as well, sometimes via nonstandard extensions: for example, Turbo Pascal offers an Extended type, and several Fortran compilers have a REAL*10 type (analogous to REAL*4 and REAL*8). Such compilers also typically include extended-precision mathematical subroutines, such as square root and trigonometric functions, in their standard libraries. Extra digits make it easier for ordinary mortals to write floating-point calculations that won't go wrong for hard-to-analyze reasons. The more extra precision you have, the more you can imagine that your custom formulas (a + bx + cyz) will behave similarly to library functions (sin x) that were designed by experts to have a error of no more than 1 ulp over their whole domain. You don't get guaranteed accuracy, but you do get more reliable accuracy. The IA32, x86-64, and Itanium processors support what is by far the most influential format on this standard, the Intel 80-bit (64 bit significand) "double extended" format, described in the next section.

And since it's a "legacy" instruction set, modern CPUs don't tend to optimize x87 instructions very well. If you don't need float80, then you have the option to do all your x86 floating point with SSE, which is a much more "normal" architecture with a random-access register file ( xmm), and ignore the x87 altogether. SSE is supported by all x86-64 CPUs, and by all 32-bit x86 CPUs from the last 20 years or so. A notable example of the need for a minimum of 64bits of precision in the significand of the extended precision format is the need to avoid precision loss when performing exponentiation on double-precision values. [26] [27] [28] [c] The x86 floating-point units do not provide an instruction that directly performs exponentiation. Instead they provide a set of instructions that a program can use in sequence to perform exponentiation using the equation:Unnormal. Only generated on the 8087 and 80287. The 80387 and later treat this as an invalid operand. The value is (−1) s × m × 2 e−16383 This 80-bit format uses one bit for the sign of the significand, 15 bits for the exponent field (i.e. the same range as the 128-bit quadruple precision IEEE 754 format) and 64 bits for the significand. The exponent field is biased by 16383, meaning that 16383 has to be subtracted from the value in the exponent field to compute the actual power of 2. [20] An exponent field value of 32767 (all fifteen bits 1) is reserved so as to enable the representation of special states such as infinity and Not a Number. If the exponent field is zero, the value is a denormal number and the exponent of 2 is −16382. [21] In addition to supporting IEEE single and double precision numbers, it also supported an 80-bit extended precision number. Some C compilers (e.g. clang) mapped this to the long double type in C

Why they'd chose to use old SW/HW instead of modern ones needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis, but often the reason boils down to one of these three: double must have greater or equal precision as float. At no point it says one must be 64-bit and the other 32-bit precision. On many embedded platforms without floating-point units, computations using a 32-bit or 64-bit mantissa without an "implied 1" would be faster, more precise, and in just about every way better than those IEEE-754 64-bit double-precision values. Unfortunately, the way the C Standard added long double broke a key aspect of the language: that all floating-point values passed to variadic functions be converted to a common type. Many languages have no built-in support for this type. The most recent example I know of that does is Swift, which has a Float80 type only available when compiling for Intel processors. (Swift also has CLongDouble which represents the exact type that the C compiler takes long double to mean, which is sometimes the same thing as Double.) The only time I've seen Float80 or long double used in practice is to use the increased precision to emulate a fused multiply-add instruction on older processors that don't support it, or very rarely to avoid loss of precision when converting from a 64-bit integer.

Floating-Point Reference Sheet for Intel® Architecture

Pseudo Not a Number. The sign bit is meaningless. The 8087 and 80287 treat this as a Signaling Not a Number. The 80387 and later treat this as an invalid operand. Infinity. The sign bit gives the sign of the infinity. The 8087 and 80287 treat this as a Signaling Not a Number. The 8087 and 80287 coprocessors used the pseudo-infinity representation for infinities. The IBM 1130, sold in 1965, [2] offered two floating-point formats: A 32-bit "standard precision" format and a 40-bit "extended precision" format. Standard precision format contains a 24-bit two's complement significand while extended precision utilizes a 32-bit two's complement significand. The latter format makes full use of the CPU's 32-bit integer operations. The characteristic in both formats is an 8-bit field containing the power of two biased by 128. Floating-point arithmetic operations are performed by software, and double precision is not supported at all. The extended format occupies three 16-bit words, with the extra space simply ignored. [3] The Microsoft BASIC port for the 6502 CPU, such as in adaptations like Commodore BASIC, AppleSoft BASIC, KIM-1 BASIC or MicroTAN BASIC, supports an extended 40-bit variant of the floating-point format Microsoft Binary Format (MBF) since 1977. [6] IEEE 754 extended precision formats [ edit ]