A multiresolution parser (MRP) can selectively extract one or more information units from a dataset based on the available processing capacity and/or the arrival rate of the dataset. Should any of these parameters change, the MRP can adaptively change the information units to be extracted such that the benefit or value of the extracted information is maximized while minimizing the cost of extraction. This tradeoff is facilitated, at least in part, by an analysis of the spectral energy of the datasets expected to be processed by the MRP. The MRP can also determine its state after a processing iteration and use that state information in subsequent iterations to minimize the required computations in such subsequent iterations, so as to improve processing efficiency.