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Due to advances and circuit technologies, custom microarchitectures are a cost-effective approach to architectures designed to support high-performance applications, such as image processing and synthesis. However, traditional methods of handwritten and hand-optimized microcode with primitive assembly languages have become impractical because of the vertical migration of complex application code into horizontal microcode. A major step in alleviating the problem is to be found in higher level languages that permit abstraction from low-level timing and concurrency details. This approach is feasible only if compilers for these languages exist that can produce high-quality microcode and that can be targeted to new machines with ease and reliability. The distinctive aspects of the Horizon retargetable microcode compiler are addressed. These features facilitate production of highly optimized microcode and targeting of the compiler to specific machines. Horizon has been targeted to 3 hypothetical microarchitectures, a pipelined signal processing architecture, and a number of commercial graphics processors.