1. A computer system for supporting a plurality of floating point architectures, each floating point architecture having at least one format, the system comprising: a floating point unit having an internal data-flow according to an internal floating point format for performing floating point operations in the internal format, wherein the internal format has a number of exponent bits which is at least the minimum number required to support each of the plurality of floating point architectures and the internal format has a number of fraction bits which is at least the minimum number required to support each of the plurality of floating point architectures; and a converter for converting an exponent value corresponding to each one of the plurality of floating point architectures into the internal floating point format such that an operand of any one of the plurality of floating point architectures input to the floating point unit is converted into the internal floating point format for operation by the floating point unit, and the result of the operation is converted back into the one of the plurality of floating point architectures by converting an exponent value corresponding to the internal floating point format into the one of the plurality of floating point architectures.