Section: Software

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

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

The different techniques proposed by the team for fixed-point conversion are implemented on the ID.Fix infrastructure. The application is described with a C code using floating-point data types and different pragmas, used to specify parameters (dynamic, input/output word-length, delay operations) for the fixed-point conversion. This tool determines and optimizes the fixed-point specification and then, 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). The different development carried-out in 2010 allows obtaining a first functional version of the tool. A fixed-point conversion can be carried-out on small examples (a single C function). The development of this tool has been achieved thanks to an INRIA graduate engineer in the context of S2S4HLS project until September 2010, a CNRS graduate engineer until August 2010 in the context of ROMA ANR project and different students during their training period.