What does "DSP" mean as in fixed point DSP or floating point DSP? Fixed-point DSPs are designed to represent and manipulate integers – positive and negative whole numbers – via a minimum of 16 bits, yielding up to 65,536 possible bit patterns (2^16). Floating-point DSPs represent and manipulate rational numbers via a minimum of 32 bits in a manner similar to scientific notation, where a number is represented with a mantissa and an exponent (e.g., A x 2^B, where 'A' is the mantissa and ‘B’ is the exponent), yielding up to 4,294,967,296 possible bit patterns (2^32).