TMS320 Floating Point (Texas Instruments DSP from '98)

Question

Background

Is there anybody here who is an EE with programming experience who has worked with the Texas Instruments TMS320 C3X-series DSP? I am currently doing some work with the C3X for a project. My goal here is to convert C3X-formatted floating point hexadecimal values into IEEE 754 format. The code that I have works properly for:

Where x is the input single floating-point C3X hex number (represented as a UInt32).

The issue, is when I attempt to use a number such as 0.123. It seems that I always get a NaN value as a result. I am currently using this code snippet from the University of Florida that I have ported over to C#.

Procedure

1. Swap the sign and exponent fields to go from C3X to IEEE. I will not show this code (unless asked) as I believe it is very straightforward for anyone who has worked with this DSP.
2. Perform the University of Florida algorithm (linked above), that I believe I do not fully understand.
3. Combine the sign, exponent, and mantissa into single-precision IEEE 754 floating point.

C# Implementation

Here is the code used to implement the algorithm for when the C3X float-number happens to be between 0 and 1 (where the issue is happening). The c30 object, represents the C3X floating point number. The ieee object represents the IEEE 754 floating point number.

EDIT: Upon popular request, here is a code sample that isn't awful. This sample is the properly working version where we dump in 15,913.35... (as C3X hexadecimal).

C30Float c30 = null;
UInt32 bias = 127;
Int32 mantissa = 0;
Int32 digit = 0;
double fraction = 0;
double exponent = 0;
double fpValue = 0;
double sign = 0;

// 1. Declare the new C3X floating point value.
c30 = new C30Float(0x0D78A56B);

// 2. Get the sign bit value.
sign = c30.GetSign();

// 3. Decide whether or not to do the flip.
if (sign == 1)
{
    // flip
    mantissa = c30.GetMantissa();
    mantissa = mantissa + 1;
    mantissa = (~mantissa) & 0x007FFFFF; // the first 9 bits have nothing to do with the mantissa
}
else
{
    mantissa = c30.GetMantissa();
}

// 4. Obtain part of the fraction (do the swim!).
for (int i = -1; i > -24; i--)
{
    // mantissa index
    int currentDigit = i + 23; // n = -23 + 23 => n = 0

    // shift forward (get the digit)
    digit = mantissa;
    digit = digit & (1 << currentDigit);

    // shift back (get the digit into the lowest place)
    digit = digit >> currentDigit;

    // apply the digit to the fraction
    fraction += digit * Math.Pow(2, i);
}

// 5. Obtain the exponential part of the number.
exponent = c30.GetExponent() + 0x7F;

// 6. Get the floating point number.
fpValue = Math.Pow(-1, sign);
fpValue *= (1 + fraction) * Math.Pow(2, exponent - bias);

I know that I have not provided the implementation details for the following:

GetMantissa()
GetExponent()
GetSign()

or...

SetMantissa()
SetExponent()
SetSign()

The reason for this is that all these are doing is entering/pulling the numbers to/from their respective fields as specified in the TMS320 C3X User's Guide. Who knows, maybe that is where I'm going wrong, but for now I'd like to start at where I think the scope of the problem begins. If any of you believe that the issue is not here then feel free to ask about this implementation and I will provide more detail as warranted.

Question

My issue is apparently with numbers between 0 and 1. So if anyone has known C3X hex values and their known counter-part floats/reals that I can plug-and-chug that would be great so I can troubleshoot this algorithm.

Note: We don't have the DSP in front of us for what we're doing and can't just get the numbers out.

Answer 1

The TMS320C3x User’s Guide lists a few test values:

• Hex value of C3X floating value interpreted as uint32 ~~ Corresponding floating point value
• 0x02400000 ~~ +6.0 (see p. 5-10)
• 0x01C00000 ~~ -3.0 (see p. 5-11)
• 0xFB400000 ~~ (+3/64) (see p. 5-11)

I'm guessing you want code something more like:

/*
Convert from single-precision TMS C3x floating point
to single-precision IEEE floating point.
2016-07-11: minor tweaks by David Cary
2016-03-21: StevieV

(see
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/223832/tms320-floating-point-texas-instruments-dsp-from-98
http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0005060/tmsieeeconv.c
http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0005060/tmsieeeconv.h
)
*/

C30Float c30 = null;
Int32 mantissa = 0;
double exponent = 0;
double sign = 0;
double fpValue = 0;

// 1. Declare the new single precision C3X floating point value.
c30 = new C30Float(0x0D78A56B);

/*
We could have followed page 5-21 in the TMS320C3x User's Guide
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/spru031f/spru031f.pdf
for C3X-->IEEE conversion.

But it seemed simpler to follow page 5-9
in the TMS320C3x User's Guide
"5.3.5 Determining the Decimal Equivalent of a TMS320C3x Floating-Point Format"
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/spru031f/spru031f.pdf
*/

// 2. Break up the C3X floating value into its components
// (Assume that these 3 functions deal with endianness).
sign = c30.GetSign(); // either 0 (positive) or 1 (negative)
exponent = c30.GetExponent(); // a signed 8-bit integer, -128 to +127.
mantissa = c30.GetMantissa(); // a 23-bit unsigned integer

// insert implied most significant bit to the left of MSB of the mantissa.
mantissa = ((1 + sign) << 23) + mantissa;

// 6. Get the floating point number.
// Move the binary point left 22 places,
// then adjust further based on exponent.
// (Possibly something like ldexp() or BitConverter.ToSingle()
// would be more efficient).
fpValue = (-sign) * mantissa * Math.Pow(2, exponent - 22);
return fpValue;