Section: Software

ID.Fix: Infrastructure for the Design of Fixed-point Systems

Participants : Daniel Ménard [ correspondant ] , Olivier Sentieys, Romuald Rocher, Loic Cloatre, Jérémie Guillot.

In parallel to the definition of the fixed-point conversion methodology an infrastructure for the design of fixed-point systems is under development to provide an optimized fixed-point specification from the application description. The application is described with a C code using floating-point types. The tool generates a C code using fixed-point data types (ac_fixed ) from Mentor Graphics. The infrastructure is made-up of three main modules corresponding to the fixed-point conversion (Fix.Conv), the accuracy evaluation (Acc.Eval) and the dynamic range evaluation (Dyn.Eval). This year, the module Acc.Eval for evaluating the fixed-point accuracy has been developed. The first version supports linear-time invariant systems. The next version will be developed in 2010 and will support any system based on arithmetic operations. The Fix.Conv module for the fixed-point conversion is under development inside the Gecos framework. The development of this tool is achieved thanks to an INRIA graduate engineer in the context of S2S4HLS project and a CNRS graduate engineer since September 2009 in the context of ROMA ANR project.