A Primer on Fractions

The decision to use fixed-point arithmetic on an integer CPU or floating-point on a specialized processor is one that is common not only in digital signal processing applications, but also in many embedded applications. It is a typical engineering tradeoff fixed-point processing is cheaper, being implementable on common integer hardware, but the algorithms are complicated and the capabilities are limited; floating-point processing requires specialized hardware with additional cost, but the ease of programming and the extra range may be critical to completing the task. Other factors such as computation speed, power, and algorithm development may also be factors to consider. Your specific application may dictate which of the two you select.