C Superset Empowers DSP Compilers And Allows For Reuse

With the introduction of DSP-specific extensions to the ISO/ANSI C programming language, a fixed-point data type is added to the language that's definable in a range of word sizes and saturation criteria. As a result, programmers can enjoy the productivity and portability benefits of writing in C while at the same time generating DSP algorithms that are very similar to what can be achieved by hand-optimized assembly-language programming. In consumer DSP applications, such as digital mobile telephony, the shorter development times and code reusability achieved by programming in the new DSP-C language extensions will prove beneficial, it's claimed. By allowing the programmer to declare the memory space in which a specific data object must be placed, DSP-C also supports the multiple memory spaces of dual Harvard architectures DSP processors, thus reading data from two separate memories in a single cycle.