It looks like they indeed also had a DSL for image processing. Despite what the Halide presentation may be emphasizing, its novelty is not so much in the DSL than the superoptimizer that comes with it, though.
Now, superoptimization is not a particularly new topic either (see e.g. [1]), but Halide demonstrated that improvements can be significant in this domain. Far more impressive than, e.g., superoptimization applied to generic assembly code (hasn't really worked so far), query optimization, etc.
Now, superoptimization is not a particularly new topic either (see e.g. [1]), but Halide demonstrated that improvements can be significant in this domain. Far more impressive than, e.g., superoptimization applied to generic assembly code (hasn't really worked so far), query optimization, etc.
[1] http://blog.regehr.org/archives/923