Fixed-point arithmetic for ASIP code generation

In this paper we present an environment supporting fixed-point arithmetic in C programs. It allows the specification of the position of the binary point in the source code and code generation for architectures with hardware support for the fixed-point arithmetic. Our tools are implemented on the top of the SUIF C compiler[1] and do not require any special adaptations. We demonstrate the validity of our approach on a series of experiments on a test program. The results show that fixed-point arithmetic executed on an integer datapath has a limited impact on the accuracy when compared to a floating-point version of the same program. In the same time the performance difference is remarkable: the fixed-point code is 3.7 to 10 times faster than its equivalent floating-point emulation on an integer datapath.