The challenges faced by the high-performance general-purpose and embedded worlds are converging. The embedded market evolves rapidly, quickly expanding the capabilities of new devices, and the requirements of these new applications demand technologies that not long ago were in the realm of high-performance computing. Conversely, the energy and cost constraints typical of the embedded world are now also among the most important design criteria for general purpose computing systems. Because performance no longer automatically increases with advances in semiconductor technology, it has become essential to discover new paths to optimize performance, energy and cost across software and hardware.