A fast interpolative wordlength optimization method for DSP systems

As Digital Signal Processing (DSP) systems grow in complexity, the classical simulation-based approaches to the wordlength optimization (WLO) problem for fixed-point data representation can no longer be used due to unaffordable execution times. Thus, it is necessary to accelerate the computations and significantly reduce the number of simulations performed in order to obtain optimized solutions in reasonable times. In this paper a new interpolative method is presented. This technique makes use of the information obtained in previous steps of the WLO process to guide the search so the number of required simulations is minimized. Experimental results show that this process provides optimized results several times faster than the traditional approaches without any significant penalty on the quality of the solutions.