Double vs Float in Embedded C

Posted on 2 mins read

C and C++ have two native types that are used for working with floating-point values.

  • double is 64-bits
  • float is 32-bits

In many APIs in the standard C library, the default type is a double which is great on 64-bit chips but not so for microcontrollers. Some build systems will downgrade double to a 32-bit value for microcontrollers. However, it is still problematic because on microcontrollers with a floating-point unit or FPU, the double type will be calculated using software using bloated routines while float values will be computed very quickly in hardware.

Whether double is 64-bit or 32-bit, you can save a good amount of code space by avoiding it.

How to avoid double

Avoiding double is trickier than you might think. Consider this code snippet.

float x = 1.0; //1.0 is a double and converted to float for x
float y = 1.0f; //1.0f is already a float and needs no conversion

Here is another one.

float x = sin(3.14f); //sin() uses doubles so there is a lot of converting
float y = sinf(3.14f); //all floating point values here

Now one more.

float x = 3.14f;
printf("x is %0.2f\n", x); //printf() uses double

But in this case, there is no easy solution to avoid double. printf() uses double when formatting. So unless you have access to modify the C library, you need a more creative workaround.

float x = 3.14f;
printf("%ld.%02ld\n", lroundf(x), (x - lroundf(x)) * 100.0f);

Note. If you avoid %f in printf() and are using newlib, you can use the iprintf() family of functions and save on some code size.

Good Luck

I can’t list out all the possible ways to avoid double, but the examples above will get you thinking the right way so you can scrub any double values from your code. And if you are using Stratify OS on an FPU enabled chip, all the scrubbing is done for you.