The tool provides necessary information that the designer needs to implement a hardware ASIC or develop fixed-point DSP software more rapidly and with greater confidence. ANSI-C is widely used to describe these functions. This conversion tool is used in conjunction with a simulation tool to provide the engineer with a complete environment. Accurate and fast simulation is critically important during this process, but simulation alone is not sufficient.
Manual effort is required in addition to simulation.
The engineer is required to explore the numerical dynamic range in the algorithm and propose fixed-point representations. Simulation is also used to re-verify the effect of changes made. During subsequent simulation, the dynamic range information is logged and returned to the user. Annotation means refining the fixed-point data type parameters using this data. The design flow always allows intermediate code to be fully executable.