[Editor's note: For an intro to fixed-point math, see Fixed-Point DSP and Algorithm Implementation. For a comparison of fixed- and floating-point hardware, see Fixed vs. floating point: a surprisingly ...

An unfortunate reality of trying to represent continuous real numbers in a fixed space (e.g. with a limited number of bits) is that this comes with an inevitable loss of both precision and accuracy.

Digital signal processors (DSPs) represent one of the fastest growing segments of the embedded world. Yet despite their ubiquity, DSPs present difficult challenges for programmers. In particular, ...