The use of a realistic component library with multiple implementations of operators results in cost-efficient designs ; slow components can then be used on noncritical paths and the more expensive components on only the critical paths. This paper presents a cost-optimized algorithm for selecting components and pipelining a data-flow graph, given such a library, and throughput and latency constraints. Experimental results on several large examples indicate the importance of component selection as a parameter in design exploration. © 1996 IEEE.