Re: fixed point vs floating point

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

"RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com" <rasikasrinivasan@gmail.com> writes:

> in embedded platforms, it is not often we have a floating point
> processor (or it may come at a price which we cannot afford!) and they
> have to be emulated. fixed point arithmetic may do the job in certain
> class of problems. in my class of problems, i am not sure the fixed
> point arithmetic will be sufficient. the experiments are to understand
> how the fixed point solutions may diverge from the floating point
> solutions.

It is not likely that experiment will answer that question, unless the
only issue is speed.

If you need to worry about data range and precision, analysis of the
inputs and algorithms is necessary. It might be possible to develop a
truly representative set of data for testing this, but that requires the
same analysis!

Speed has to be measured, on a representative set of data; it's somewhat
easier to develop a data set that covers all speed issues.

-- 
-- Stephe