FRIDGE: a fixed-point design and simulation environment

  • Authors:

  • H. Keding;M. Willems;M. Coors;H. Meyr

  • Affiliations:

  • Integrated Signal Processing Systems, RWTH Aachen, University of Technology, D-52056 Aachen, Germany;Integrated Signal Processing Systems, RWTH Aachen, University of Technology, D-52056 Aachen, Germany;Integrated Signal Processing Systems, RWTH Aachen, University of Technology, D-52056 Aachen, Germany;Integrated Signal Processing Systems, RWTH Aachen, University of Technology, D-52056 Aachen, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

Digital systems, especially those for mobile applications are sensitive to power consumption, chip size and costs. Therefore they are realized using fixed-point architectures, either dedicated HW or programmable DSPs. On the other hand, system design starts from a floating-point description. These requirements have been the motivation for FRIDGE (Fixed-point pRogrammIng DesiGn Environment), a design environment for the specification, evaluation and implementation of fixed-point systems. FRIDGE offers a seamless design flow from a floating- point description to a fixed-point implementation. Within this paper we focus on two core capabilities of FRIDGE: (1) the concept of an interactive, automated transformation of floating-point programs written in ANSI-C into fixed-point specifications, based on an interpolative approach. The design time reductions that can be achieved make FRIDGE a key component for an efficient HW/SW-CoDesign. (2) a fast fixed-point simulation that performs comprehensive compile-time analyses, reducing simulation time by one order of magnitude compared to existing approaches.