int to float conversion on GPU

http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Common_Mistakes#Depth_Buffer_Precision

There is a sentence here that says:
“The GL driver will copy the depth buffer from the graphics card and it will use the CPU to convert it to floating point values.”

Is the GPU really incapable of converting ints to a floating point value, or am I taking this sentence out of context?

The DMA part of the GPU, the part that actually copies memory back and forth, probably can’t.

What about converting between floats and its in GLSL shaders?

Um, what about it? The sentence you quoted was talking about copies from the depth buffer.

Can the processors on the GPU do it?

Yup