Answer:
Yes.
Yes.
In the early days of MIPS,
floating point was done on
a separate chip.
Special instructions were used to bridge the gap between
the two chips (such as the two move instructions mtc1
and mfc1 we have already seen).
Although these days there is usually just one processor chip,
some of the instructions act as if the chips were separate.
(Thought Question: ) Do you think that testing if two floating point values are equal is a common thing to do?