IBM has got Pixar in its crosshairs.

[KimB]

But my point was that additional functional units are not required for the hardware to support additional precisions

Well, my point was that additional functional units may be desirable for performance/transistor count reasons.

Furthermore, I think parts of the NV3x design, specifically the different-precision functional units, are probably going to be an excellent model for future designs, particularly if FP64 is implemented. I will admit that the specifics of the NV3x architecture may be way off, but I think the essential idea about precisions is excellent.