An apparatus to facilitate supporting 8-bit floating point format operands in a computing architecture is disclosed. The apparatus includes a processor comprising: a decoder to decode an instruction fetched for execution into a decoded instruction, wherein the decoded instruction is a matrix instruction that operates on 8-bit floating point operands to cause the processor to perform a parallel dot product operation; a controller to schedule the decoded instruction and provide input data for the 8-bit floating point operands in accordance with an 8-bit floating data format indicated by the decoded instruction; and systolic dot product circuitry to execute the decoded instruction using systolic layers, each systolic layer comprises one or more sets of interconnected multipliers, shifters, and adder, each set of multipliers, shifters, and adders to generate a dot product of the 8-bit floating point operands.