Back when I was working on my thesis, there was a very good reason I used fixed-point calculations in the DSP core that represented the primary technology put to work therein: so I didn’t have to explain floating point to my committee.

But there are a lot of things to recommend them, the most obvious one being speed.  Modern computers create the illusion of doing everything instantaneously, until they don’t.  In CS classes, they tell you “integer math is faster than floating-point, so try to do things with integers or fixed-point” and often leave it at that.  If you’re like me, you wonder “so… what’s fixed-point?” Continue reading →