> Do hardware constraints make, for example, an 8.8 bit format easier to handle than a 12.4 format? Sometimes they do. For example, the ARMv7 DSP extensions s

> Do hardware constraints make, for example, an 8.8 bit format easier to handle than a 12.4 format? Sometimes they do. For example, the ARMv7 DSP extensions support signed Q0.31 and signed Q0.15 arithmetic much faster than any other fixed-point format.