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VSIPL Overview

VSIPL is a new standardized API that addresses this need for portability in mathematical applications. The API document for VSIPL is available on the web at www.vsipl.org. The mathematical content of the VSIPL API is very large. In fact, the number of functions posed a problem for the VSIPL forum. Not all systems could support the full API. Implementing the full set would be a major project for most implementers, and the effort for a full implementation could have discouraged many from developing VSIPL libraries. Conversely, if implementers were allowed to select unique subsets from VSIPL, portability would be lost.

To prevent these problems and encourage the success of VSIPL, standardized subsets, known as "profiles", were selected. To be considered a VSIPL library, an implementation is required to support at least one of the profiles. At this time, the VSIPL forum has approved two profiles, Core and Core Lite.

The Core Lite profile of 129 functions includes many commonly used VSIPL object definitions and a small subset of vector functions performing elementary operations, some 1D FFTs, and some FIR filtering. This profile provides a simple, basic library for floating-point signal processing. The Core profile contains 515 functions, including all functions found in the Core Lite profile. VSIPL Core is a rich set of functions that includes most of the 1D and 2D functionality in VSIPL.

VSIPL enjoys widespread support in the embedded systems community because it guarantees application portability. It is not just another math library similar to the high-performance math libraries provided by embedded systems vendors. VSIPL guarantees immediate portability of a user's application code to any vendor's hardware with VSIPL support.