Optimized Ansi C libraries for DSP
The rub is that ANSI C is not a terribly good language for real time DSP. Many features that a real DSP chip has can't be addressed in ANSI C. These include address generators, bit-reverse addressing, circular addressing, SIMD, memory segments, multiple buses, fractional data types, fractional multiply, certain fixed point math, zero overhead looping etc. Hence most compilers for DSPs have an extensive set of language extensions (#pragma, inline assembler, new keywords, etc). However these are decidedly non-ANSI and not portable.

Writing a simple fixed point FIR filter in ANSI C can easily be 10 times less efficient than using the proper extensions or assembly code.