Ordinary users usually never think about what a coprocessor is, and the vast majority do not know about its existence. Everything changes when the operating system starts to act up with enviable persistence and gives out messages that the corresponding driver was not found. What to do in this situation? You can find a lot of solutions, however, without a full understanding of what this device is, none of them will fully solve the problem.
What is a coprocessor: a general understanding
First of all, let's see what it is and what it is for. Based on the name of this device, it is not difficult to conclude that this is some kind of additional processor that is installed in the computer system along with the main (central) one. Like the CPU, the coprocessor is mounted on the motherboard. However, it is necessary to distinguish the main options for its installation. As for the coprocessor device, it can be presented as a separate microcircuit (chip), for which a special place for mounting (bus) is allocated on the motherboard, and as a component built directly into the central processor.
The main purpose of the coprocessor
With the simplest definition, there seems to be no difficulty so far. But let's see what a coprocessor is in terms of the functions that are assigned to it. Since it is a kind of additional component that works only in conjunction with the central processor, it can be assumed that it is needed only to unload the CPU in a sense, removing some of the demanding tasks from it.
Indeed, in most cases, its main role comes down to just that. But here it is important to understand that the coprocessor, unlike the central processor, is often quite limited in its capabilities and cannot perform some important functions inherent in the main equipment. Based on this understanding and feedback on the operation of such a component, the coprocessor can also be called a device of strictly limited or narrowly targeted action. It is precisely on these grounds that the main types of coprocessors are classified.
Coprocessor types
For the most part, coprocessors can be divided into three large classes:
- math
- I / O coprocessors;
- coprocessors for narrowly targeted tasks.
Mathematical coprocessors are designed to perform calculations either with integers with a total capacity of 32 and 64 bits, or for calculations with floating point, in which the capacity of the data increases to 80 bits.
For the most part, I / O co-processors are focused either on removing control from the CPU for performing operations on data input or output, or on expanding the address space of the central processor, which by its design does not have such additional capabilities.
You can count a lot of narrowly focused tasks in computer technologies (let us dwell on this separately), however, as the most striking example, we can cite all kinds of logic microcircuits included in the corresponding data processing chains (for example, the co-processors of the 8087 series for CPU rulers were very widespread at one time) 8086 and 8088 from Intel, although it is the coprocessors for bundling with the CPU that can be produced by third-party manufacturers).
Basic coprocessor commands
What is a coprocessor, a little understood. Now it’s worth separately saying a few words about the main teams.
A complete set contains about 80 basic commands, but the most significant and often used are the following:
- data transfer, including data of the material, integer and decimal type;
- comparison of data of the above types, supplemented by data with zero and a system for their analysis;
- simple arithmetic calculations relating only to data of a real type;
- arithmetic and auxiliary calculations for integer data, including work with square roots, modules, changing the sign of a number, highlighting the mantissa or order;
- transcendental teams used in calculating logarithms, degrees and trigonometric functions;
- controls, including coprocessor initialization, mode switching, work with the environment and the stack.
Sound generators
But now many (if not all) users will be very surprised, because we will talk about devices that are known to everyone. And as a simple example, we give the most ordinary sound cards, which in a sense can also be attributed to the coprocessors of a narrowly oriented direction related to the reproduction or generation of sound. In computer terminology, they are often called sound modules.
As already understood, they are responsible only for strictly defined actions, but their difference, so to speak, from “pure” coprocessors is that they perform functions that are clearly inaccessible to central processors. As you know, there are three types of sound cards:
- integrated;
- installed on the motherboard in PCI slots;
- external (connected via other interfaces, for example, USB).
GPUs
Video cards also belong to the category of coprocessors, however, for them the most common designation is like a graphics processor, chip or adapter. This type of device for the most part relates to equipment that unloads the CPU and RAM in terms of floating point computing operations, which are most often used in modern computer games or in processing graphics or video.
Such adapters are divided into only two types: integrated and discrete.
It goes without saying that for the correct operation of the above devices as appropriate coprocessors, a driver in Windows systems is simply necessary. Without such management software, all this hardware will become a pile of scrap metal and will simply not work. And that is why, when some message is issued regarding the absence or impossibility of initializing the driver, this may not always apply exclusively to the described component of the CPU.
Probabilistic processors
Co-processors of this type are relatively widespread, their responsibilities include comparative analysis. Most often, such systems are used in medicine for diagnosing diseases, in biometrics, in monitoring systems, voice recognition, protection against spam and phishing. Often, banking operations related to, say, determining the borrower's creditworthiness are also related to the use of such systems.
Coprocessor driver: what to do when errors occur due to its absence?
Finally, let's move on to troubleshooting. Most often, as mentioned above, the operating system displays a message about the lack of a coprocessor driver (the 7th modification is installed or another version of Windows, in this case, it doesn’t matter). If we are talking about graphics and sound cards, then everything is simple. It is enough to update or reinstall the appropriate software, using either driver downloads from the official resources of the manufacturers or through the use of automated utilities.
But what to do when it comes to an error in the operation of the main coprocessor. Windows 7, however, like all other systems of this family, is not particularly overloaded in terms of finding the most appropriate software, but installs exactly the software that seems most suitable for it. And the reviews of experts confirm this in full. Because of this, the device can then work incorrectly or not work at all.
By and large, the easiest way to eliminate this failure is to reinstall the drivers for the main chipset (chipset of the motherboard) by downloading it from the manufacturer’s resource. For laptops, many manufacturers offer ready-made solutions in the form of integral driver packages, which can be found by the nomenclature name of their laptop model or by serial number. If the searches were unsuccessful, you can determine the identifiers of the coprocessor in the “Device Manager”, and then set the search for the necessary software based on this information.