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Due to the specialized architecture and stream-based instruction set, traditional DSP compilers usually yield poor-quality object codes. Lack of an insight into the DSP architecture and the specific semantics of DSP applications, a compiler would have trouble selecting appropriate special instructions to exploit advanced hardware features. In order to extract optimal performance from DSPs, we propose a set of user-specified directives called Digital Signal Processing Interface (DSPI), which can facilitate code generation by relaying DSP specific semantics to compilers. We have implemented a prototype compiler based on the SPAM and SUIF compiler toolkits and integrated the DSPI into the prototype compiler. The compiler is currently targeted to TI's TMS320C6X DSP and will be extended to a retargetable compiler toolkit for embedded systems and System-on-a-Chip (SoC) platforms. Preliminary experimental results show that by incorporating DSPI directives significant performance improvements can be achieved in several DSP applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]