Why Use Fixed-Point Hardware?

Digital hardware is becoming the primary means in which control systems and signal processing filters are implemented. Digital hardware can be classified as either off-the-shelf hardware (for example, microcontrollers, microprocessors, general purpose processors, and digital signal processors) or custom hardware. Within these two types of hardware, there are many architecture designs. These designs range from systems with a single instruction, single data stream processing unit to systems with multiple instruction, multiple data stream processing units.

Within digital hardware, numbers are represented as either fixed-point or floating-point data types. For both these data types, word sizes are fixed at a set number of bits. However, the dynamic range of fixed-point values is much less than floating-point values with equivalent word sizes. Therefore, in order to avoid overflow or unreasonable quantization errors, fixed-point values must be scaled. Since floating-point processors can greatly simplify the real-time implementation of a control law or digital filter, and floating-point numbers can effectively approximate real-world numbers, then why use a microcontroller or processor with fixed-point hardware support? The answer to this question in many cases is cost and size:

• Cost - Fixed-point hardware is more cost effective where price/cost is an important consideration. When using digital hardware in a product, especially mass-produced products, fixed-point hardware, costing much less than floating-point hardware, can result in significant savings.

• Size - The logic circuits of fixed-point hardware are much less complicated than those of floating-point hardware. This means the fixed-point chip size is smaller with less power consumption when compared with floating-point hardware. For example, consider a portable telephone where one of the product design goals is to make it as portable (small and light) as possible. If one of today's high-end floating-point, general purpose processors is used, a large heat sink and battery would also be needed resulting in a costly, large, and heavy portable phone.

After making the decision to use fixed-point hardware, the next step is to choose a method for implementing the dynamic system (for example, control system or digital filter). Floating-point software emulation libraries are generally ruled out because of timing or memory size constraints. Therefore, you are left with fixed-point math where binary integer values are scaled.