POSIXkiinteät

POSIXkiinteät is a term used in Finnish computing discourse to describe a hypothetical fixed-point arithmetic extension for POSIX-compliant systems. It refers to a standardized interface for fixed-point numbers and operations intended to complement floating-point in embedded and real-time environments.

Goals include portability across POSIX platforms, deterministic rounding and overflow behavior, predictable performance on resource-constrained hardware, and integration with existing POSIX I/O and threading abstractions.

Typical data types include fixed32_t and fixed64_t representing signed fixed-point numbers, with defined scaling factors or Q-format conventions. Core operations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and conversion to and from integers and floating-point numbers. The API would include error reporting, saturation vs. wrap-around semantics, and range checking.

Status and adoption: POSIXkiinteät is not part of official POSIX standards. It exists as an informal proposal or as library implementations in some projects, primarily in embedded systems tooling. Real-world use remains limited and varies by vendor.

Relationship to existing standards: While C provides integer and floating types, fixed-point is not standardized in POSIX. POSIXkiinteät would aim to bridge this gap by offering a portable, standardized fixed-point facility that aligns with POSIX threading, signaling, and I/O semantics.

See also: POSIX, fixed-point arithmetic, embedded systems.