Fixify: A Toolset for Automated Floating-point to Fixed-point Conversion

Automation of the floating-point to fixed-point conversion of algorithmic descriptions is expected to produce significant improvements in the design process of embedded systems, in terms of its efficiency and error resilience. Although several analytical and statistical approaches to help the designer make the conversion trade-off between design parameters and implementation costs do exist, none are able to replace the designer in making the tradeoff itself. Fixify, a toolset for automated floating-point to fixed-point conversion is presented here. It uses existing optimisation heuristics to perform the conversion tradeoff, disburdening the designer and significantly improving the design process.