Methods and apparatus are provided for design entry and synthesis of components, such as components implemented on a programmable chip. In one example, a design tool receives natural or intuitive parameters describing characteristics of a component in a design. Natural or intuitive parameters include input data rate, output latency, footprint, etc. Non-natural or non-intuitive parameters such as clock rate and pipeline stages need not be provided. The design tool automatically selects optimal components using natural parameters. Multiple instantiations of an optimal component, or multiplexing through an optimal component can be used to further improve the design.