sfloat24 Floating Point DataType - Request for Comments
Fernando via Digitalmars-d
digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Tue Apr 15 23:37:06 PDT 2014
I am Eng. (Electrical Engineer) Fernando Parillo of University of
Cassino, Italy, author of several papers about sfloat24 math
library. I conceived this library, in the early of 2007 and this
library worked in stable manner in the middle of 2010, date of
publication of the first paper concerning its usage on a FPGA
device concerning the implementation of a control strategy
applied to a Power Electronic converter, July 2010. As well known
a FPGA is a programmable digital logic device by software. Thus,
it can execute any logical function such as numeric processors,
digital interface, controllers and decoders only in a single IC.
The FPGA architecture contains programmable logic components
called Configurable Logic Blocks (CLB), and a hierarchy of
reconfigurable interconnects that allow the blocks to be wired
together. The CLB can be configured to make complex combinational
functions, or only simple logic gates like AND and XOR.
In most FPGA, the CLB also include memory elements, which can be
simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memory. FPGAs are
programmed using a logic circuit diagram or a source code in
Hardware Description Language (HDL). The main motivation to
develop this library was to implement a floating-point numerical
system on a low cost FPGA device, as an ALTERA Cyclone I. It is
obvious that this library could be suitable also for low cost
microcontrollers where the ALU has low performances. In view of
the circumstances of the new programming language, development,
as D language, could be useful to include a short floating-point
number format in it, as native numbering system. A reduced
floating-point library could be very useful for low cost
processors programming. Nowadays low cost microcontrollers and/or
microprocessors offer acceptable performances only if integer
numbers are used. If you are interested to implement this format
in the future D programming language, I could offer my support.
For me this collaboration could be an excellent
experience/opportunity to improve the sfloat24 math library and
the same time to learn more about computer science skills. At
moment I have implemented, the basic arithmetic operations,
square root of a number, hyperbolic/trigonometric functions, etc.
To understand the utility of this floating-point format you
could look for “sfloat24 converter tool ver. 1.1” available on
the Apple® app. Store. For any questions do not hesitate to
contact me by email o directly using SKYPE.
Best Regards
F. Parillo
University of Cassino Research Assistant, Apple® IOS developer
Website: http://fparillo.wix.com/accademic , SKYPE account:
f.parillo
Thanks a lot for your paid attention and have a nice day.
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