Fixed-point arithmetic: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:25, 12 July 2004

Revision as of 03:28, 7 January 2005

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[[Category:Computer arithmetic]]

''See also [[fixed point (mathematics)]].''

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<!-- Was: Here are some high-profile uses of fixed-point representations -->

Here are some last-gasp examples of fixed-point representations still in common use:

<!-- (whoever wrote the 'was' please lets be more objective? -->

# [[GnuCash]] is an application for tracking money. It is written in C and switched from a floating-point representation of money to a fixed-point implementation as of version 1.6. This change was made to avoid the potential rounding errors of floating-point representations.

# [[Tremor]] isand a[[Toast (disambiguation)|Toast]] are software librarylibraries that decodesdecode the [[Ogg Vorbis]] and [[Full Rate|GSM Full Rate]] audio formatformats respectively. TremorThese usescodecs use fixed-point arithmetic because many audio decoding hardware devices do not have an FPU (to save money) and audio decoding requires enough performance that a software implementation of floating-point on low-speed devices would not workproduce output in real welltime.

# All [[3D computer graphics|3D graphics]] engines on Sony's original [[PlayStation]] and Nintendo's [[Game Boy Advance]] and [[Nintendo DS]] video game systems use fixed-point arithmetic for the same reason as Tremor and Toast: to gain throughput on an architecture without an FPU.

==External links==

* [http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v1.6/C/t7204.html What's New in GNUCash (version 1.6)]

* [http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis Ogg Vorbis web site]

[[Category:Computer terminology]] [[Category:Computer arithmetic]]

[[Category:Computer terminology]]