Trips uses several techniques to do just that. First, the Trips compiler sends executable code to the hardware in blocks of up to 128 instructions. The processor "sees" and executes a block all at once, as if it were a single instruction, greatly decreasing the overhead associated with instruction handling and scheduling.

Second, instructions inside a block execute in a "data flow" fashion, meaning that each instruction executes as soon as its inputs arrive, rather than in some sequence imposed by the compiler or the programmer. "As such, the data is flowing through the instructions," explains Steve Keckler, a computer science professor and a Trips project co-leader with Burger.