Software gets to grips with fixed-point design

A new Fixed-Point Toolbox and Simulink Fixed Point bring fixed-point design capabilities to Matlab and enhanced fixed-point simulation in Simulink.

A new Fixed-Point Toolbox and Simulink Fixed Point bring fixed-point design capabilities to Matlab and enhanced fixed-point simulation in Simulink.

Together, the Fixed-Point Toolbox and Simulink Fixed Point offer a complete fixed-point design environment, enabling engineers to eliminate the time-consuming and error-prone process of creating and debugging fixed-point designs in the C programming language.

The Fixed-Point Toolbox provides a natural extension to the Matlab language for developing, prototyping, and verifying fixed-point algorithms and system components using standard Matlab notation.

It enables users to develop fixed-point algorithms using bit-true arithmetic and logical operations with word lengths from 2bit to 64Kbit.

Additionally, the Fixed-Point Toolbox works with Simulink so that designers can create test benches in Matlab for bit-true testing of fixed-point Simulink models.

The new toolbox also enables input and output of fixed-point data types from Simulink models, facilitating the analysis of fixed-point simulations and implementation.

"The increasing complexity of electronic and embedded systems has driven a dramatic growth and demand for higher-level system design tools", said Ken Karnofsky, Director of Marketing, Signal Processing and Communications, The MathWorks.

"The MathWorks is meeting this demand by expanding its offering of products for model-based design to address the problem of creating, simulating and verifying fixed-point designs".

Simulink Fixed Point, previously known as the Fixed-Point Blockset, brings fixed-point capabilities to the Simulink product family, including Simulink, the Signal Processing Blockset, the Video and Image Processing Blockset, and Stateflow.

It gives engineers high-performance system simulation and advanced fixed-point analysis and auto-scaling capabilities within Simulink, which streamline the design of control and signal processing systems with fixed-point components.

Using Simulink Fixed Point, engineers can control fixed-point data types and scaling, identify overflow and saturation errors, and observe finite word effects on dynamic range and precision without modifying the original system model.

Additionally, users can easily benchmark their final fixed-point implementation against the original floating-point design within the context of a complete system simulation.

Users can also automatically generate fixed-point ANSI C-code from their Simulink models by using The MathWorks Real-Time Workshop, Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder, and Embedded Targets for specific processors.

The Fixed-Point Toolbox and Simulink Fixed Point are available immediately for Microsoft Windows, Unix/Linux, and Macintosh platforms.

US list prices start at $1000 each.

Back to top