Abstract: A processor particularly useful in multimedia applications such as image processing is based on a stream programming model and has a tiered storage architecture to minimize global bandwidth requirements. The processor has a stream register file through which the processor's functional units transfer streams to execute processor operations. Load and store instructions transfer streams between the stream register file and a stream memory; send and receive instructions transfer streams between stream register files of different processors; and operate instructions pass streams between the stream register file and computational kernels. Each of the computational kernels is capable of performing compound vector operations. A compound vector operation performs a sequence of arithmetic operations on data read from the stream register file, i.e., a global storage resource, and generates a result that is written back to the stream register file.