In digital hardware, numbers are stored in binary words. A binary word is a fixed-length sequence of bits (1's and 0's). How hardware components or software functions interpret this sequence of 1's and 0's is defined by the data type. Binary numbers are represented as either fixed-point or floating-point data types.

To simulate the mathematical behavior of computer hardware, or to generate efficient code from a model, you can control the numeric data types of signals and parameters.