Fixed point restrictions with respect to DSP

1. What is fixed-point in DSP?
2. What is a fixed-point processor?
3. What is difference between fixed-point and floating-point?

What is fixed-point in DSP?

Fixed-point DSPs are designed to represent and manipulate integers – positive and negative whole numbers – via a minimum of 16 bits, yielding up to 65,536 possible bit patterns (2¹⁶).

What is a fixed-point processor?

The fixed point processor uses non privileged instructions, and GPRs are used as internal storage mechanism. The PowerPC® fixed-point processor uses the following registers for nonprivileged instructions. Thirty-two 32-bit General-Purpose Registers (GPRs).

What is difference between fixed-point and floating-point?

In fixed point notation, there are a fixed number of digits after the decimal point, whereas floating point number allows for a varying number of digits after the decimal point. This representation has fixed number of bits for integer part and for fractional part.