4. The method of claim 1 further including the step of merging selected ones of said circuit element descriptions defining said datapath functions into combined functions in accordance with predefined optimization criteria, wherein each combined function is performed by at least one of said plurality of hardware description language datapath library elements.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein said merging step includes the step of merging single output datapath functions defined by said circuit element descriptions into multiple output datapath functions.