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One of the first difficulties that are encountered when moving from a C-based algorithm description to a hardware implementation is to make the algorithm work with fixed-point data-representations and arithmetic. This is typically done with a lot of ad-hoc code and trial-and error – by definition error-prone and very time-consuming. A|RT Library makes this process much less painful by providing the designer with an elegant and robust way to add fixed-point arithmetic to his algorithm. A|RT Library provides the designer with a set of C++ classes that encapsulate the characteristics of fixed-point data types and the most important operators. Although a C++ environment is required to compile and link code that references A|RT Library, only a very limited knowledge of C++ is required to be able to use it. The C++ template mechanism is used to provide a very transparent and natural interface to the fixed-point arithmetic. For a C-programmer, working with fixed-point data and operators is just as easy and using any standard C data type or operator – the underlying classes will automatically model the intended behavior in a bit-precise way, including overflow- and quantization effects Careful fixed-point analysis and design, as can be performed with A|RT Library, is very often the first step in creating a hardware implementation of a given algorithm or "function". With A|RT Builder, a complimentary product of Frontier Design's A|RT product-line, a large sub-set of ANSI-C code, extended with A|RT Library fixed-point data-types, is automatically translated into synthesizable VHDL or Verilog HDL descriptions.

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