SPOILER: What is a MAD/FMA? (click to show text) TL;DR: FMA (Fused multiply add) and MAD/MADD (multiply-add) are a specific instuction in a processor which allows to performa a multiplication followed by an add in a single instruction. Having that instruction baked in hardware allows to achieve two results, higher performance due to performaing the operation in a single instruction and less instruction/fetch and decoding down the cpu pipeline. Proper explanation: FMA on wikipedia Read more ...