Elementary functions are extensively used in computer graphics, signal and image processing, and communication systems. This paper presents a special-purpose compiler that automatically generates customized look-up tables and implementations for elementary functions under user given constraints. The generated implementations include a C/C++ code that can be used directly by applications running on multicores, as well as a MATLAB-like code that can be translated directly to a hardware module on FPGA platforms. The experimental results show that our solutions for function evaluation bring significant performance improvements to applications on multicores as well as significant resource savings to designs on FPGAs. © 2010 EDAA.