Work on embedded extensions to C have been ongoing for years, but the ISO 18037 proposal (http://std.dkuug.dk) is now up for a vote. Acceptance is expected in 2003.
ISO 18037 incorporates embedded C and DSP-C extensions that have been proposed by a number of companies and organizations. Many companies, such as ACE Associated Compiler Experts (www.ace.nl) and Altium Technology's Tasking (www.tasking.com), have supported different aspects of the proposal in their compiler products.
The proposed standard addresses three main areas: fixed-point arithmetic, multiple address space support, and I/O register support. The fixed-point arithmetic is key to many DSPs. It's useful on many standard CPUs as well.