The implementation of computational systems to perform challenging operations often involves balancing the performance specification, system throughput, and available system resources. For problems of automatic target recognition (ATR), these three quantities of interest are the probability of classification error, the rate at which regions of interest are processed, and the capabilities of the underlying hardware (which is a function of the available computational resources and available power). An understanding of the inter-relationships between these factors can be an aid in making informed choices while exploring competing design possibilities. Combining characterizations of ATR performance, which yield probability of classification error as a function of target model complexity, with analytical models of computational performance, which yield throughput as a function of target model complexity and available resources, we can form a set of parametric curves which relate the quality of the results to the resources consumed.