Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Request for comment: Adding fixed point to VOLK

[CEL]

Hm, wait, realizing something: 
Q1.31 differs from what a x86 CPU can reasonably deal with in that it's
not 2's complement for negative numbers; since I'd guess the same
situation applies to ARM (two's complement being the standard way of
dealing with numbers), maybe we should just have one VOLK kernel /
routine to be used within VOLK kernels

volk_q1.31_convert_32i

to get a number format that CPU instructions can actually deal with,
and then implement the rest of fixed point arithmetic with that.
Is that sensible?

Best regards,
Marcus
On Fri, 2019-05-31 at 11:34 +0200, Albin Stigö wrote:
> What about naming these functions... any ideas? Here are some
> suggestions of the top of my head:
> 
> volk_32i_convert_32f
> volk_q1.32_convert_32f
> volk_q1_32_convert_32f
> 
> 
> --Albin
> 
> On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 10:30 AM Albin Stigö <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > Thanks for the feedback Marcus!
> > 
> > Pretty much all SDRs I've seen use either 8, 16 or 32 bit full range
> > integers (or 24 bits packed in the most significant bits of a 32 bit
> > int so can use same conversion as 32 bit).
> > 
> > Yes Q1.15 means 1 sign bit and 15 fractional bits, in practice this
> > just means that a full range int16_t will map to +-1.0. An N-tap FIR
> > filter which has L-bit data values and M-bit coefficients requires L +
> > M + log2(N) bits in the accumulator.
> > 
> > A CIC decimator/interpolator might also be interesting, although I'm
> > not sure if there's already an implementation.
> > 
> > 
> > --Albin
> > 
> > On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 10:13 AM Müller, Marcus (CEL) <address@hidden> 
> > wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hi Albin,
> > > 
> > > I'd love this, especially if we end up with a kernel that we can use to
> > > build decimating FIR filters that inherently convert to higher-bitwidth
> > > int or floating point.
> > > 
> > > I think this could be super useful in hardware flow graphs, where one
> > > would get integer numbers from hardware anyway; in a low-SNR scenario
> > > only processing gain (e.g. through filtering / correlation) would make
> > > it sensible to use a larger integer or floating point's larger dynamic
> > > range.
> > > 
> > > Not quite sure how that would preferably look like, but I'd imagine
> > > Q1.15 going in, getting weighted internally with Q1.15 (or Q1.31 with
> > > limited amplitude) coefficients to add Q1.31 numbers to a Q1.31
> > > accumulator. (I'm assuming Q1.15 means 15 fractional binary digits and
> > > one sign bit.)
> > > 
> > > (Oh, and yes, x86_64 / SIMD extensions have relatively nice conversion
> > > instructions.)
> > > 
> > > Best regards,
> > > Marcus
> > > 
> > > On Fri, 2019-05-31 at 09:50 +0200, Albin Stigö wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > Volk has functions for converting between int and float by casting and
> > > > multiplying with a scalar. I'd like to purpose functions for the
> > > > special case where scalar is 1/INT32_MAX (and 1/INT16_MAX etc) as this
> > > > is a very common use case and might be available to an optimization.
> > > > Certain CPUs (armv8 in particular [1], not sure about x86? [2]) has
> > > > hardware instructions for converting fixed point to float and back.
> > > > 
> > > > In particular I'm interested in adding the common Q1.31 and Q1.15
> > > > formats (full range signed int32_t and full range int16_t to
> > > > (-1.0)-1.0 float).
> > > > 
> > > > Would be grateful for input regarding this and in particular ideas for
> > > > naming the functions.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > --Albin
> > > > 
> > > > [1] 
> > > > http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0801h/pge1427897637493.html
> > > > [2] 
> > > > https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/fast-floating-point-to-integer-conversions
> > > > 
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
> > > > address@hidden
> > > > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio

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