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Summary: StreamIt: A Language for Streaming Applications
William Thies, Michal Karczmarek, and Saman Amarasinghe
Laboratory for Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
{thies, karczma, saman}@lcs.mit.edu
Abstract. We characterize high-performance streaming applications as
a new and distinct domain of programs that is becoming increasingly im-
portant. The StreamIt language provides novel high-level representations
to improve programmer productivity and program robustness within the
streaming domain. At the same time, the StreamIt compiler aims to im-
prove the performance of streaming applications via stream-specific anal-
yses and optimizations. In this paper, we motivate, describe and justify
the language features of StreamIt, which include: a structured model of
streams, a messaging system for control, a re-initialization mechanism,
and a natural textual syntax.
1 Introduction
Applications that are structured around some notion of a "stream" are becoming
increasingly important and widespread. There is evidence that streaming media
applications are already consuming most of the cycles on consumer machines
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