To derive rational and convincible solutions to practical decision making problems in complex and hierarchical human organizations, the decision making problems are formulated as relevant mathematical programming problems which are solved by developing optimization techniques so as to exploit characteristics or structural features of the formulated problems. In particular, for resolving con?ict in decision making in hierarchical managerial or public organizations, the multi level formula tion of the mathematical programming problems has been often employed together with the solution concept of Stackelberg equilibrium. However, weconceivethatapairoftheconventionalformulationandthesolution concept is not always suf?cient to cope with a large variety of decision making situations in actual hierarchical organizations. The following issues should be taken into consideration in expression and formulation of decision making problems. Informulationofmathematicalprogrammingproblems, itistacitlysupposedthat decisions are made by a single person while game theory deals with economic be havior of multiple decision makers with fully rational judgment. Because two level mathematical programming problems are interpreted as static Stackelberg games, multi level mathematical programming is relevant to noncooperative game theory; in conventional multi level mathematical programming models employing the so lution concept of Stackelberg equilibrium, it is assumed that there is no communi cation among decision makers, or they do not make any binding agreement even if there exists such communication. However, for decision making problems in such as decentralized large ?rms with divisional independence, it is quite natural to sup pose that there exists communication and some cooperative relationship among the decision maker

2 e This book describes principles, methods and tools that are common to computer applications for design tasks. CAD is considered in this book as a discipline that provides the required know-how in computer hardware and software, in systems analysis and in engineering methodology for specifying, designing, implementing, introducing, and using computer based systems for design purposes. The first chapter gives an impression of the book as a whole, and following chapters deal with the history and the components of CAD, the process aspect of CAD, CAD architecture, graphical devices and systems, CAD engineering methods, CAD data transfer, and application examples. The flood of new developments in the field and the success of the first edition of this book have led the authors to prepare this completely revised, updated and extended second edition. Extensive new material is included on computer graphics, implementation methodology and CAD data transfer; the material on graphics standards is updated. The book is aimed primarily at engineers who design or install CAD systems. It is also intended for students who seek a broad fundamental background in CAD.

Although research in architectural synthesis has been conducted for over ten years it has had very little impact on industry. This in our view is due to the inability of current architectural synthesizers to provide area-delay competitive (or "optimal") architectures, that will support interfaces to analog, asynchronous, and other complex processes. They also fail to incorporate testability. The OASIC (optimal architectural synthesis with interface constraints) architectural synthesizer and the CATREE (computer aided trees) synthesizer demonstrate how these problems can be solved. Traditionally architectural synthesis is viewed as NP hard and there fore most research has involved heuristics. OASIC demonstrates by using an IP approach (using polyhedral analysis), that most input algo rithms can be synthesized very fast into globally optimal architectures. Since a mathematical model is used, complex interface constraints can easily be incorporated and solved. Research in test incorporation has in general been separate from syn thesis research. This is due to the fact that traditional test research has been at the gate or lower level of design representation. Nevertheless as technologies scale down, and complexity of design scales up, the push for reducing testing times is increased. On way to deal with this is to incorporate test strategies early in the design process. The second half of this text examines an approach for integrating architectural synthesis with test incorporation. Research showed that test must be considered during synthesis to provide good architectural solutions which minimize Xlll area delay cost functions."

The success of VHDL since it has been balloted in 1987 as an IEEE standard may look incomprehensible to the large population of hardware designers, who had never heared of Hardware Description Languages before (for at least 90% of them), as well as to the few hundreds of specialists who had been working on these languages for a long time (25 years for some of them). Until 1988, only a very small subset of designers, in a few large companies, were used to describe their designs using a proprietary HDL, or sometimes a HDL inherited from a University when some software environment happened to be developped around it, allowing usability by third parties. A number of benefits were definitely recognized to this practice, such as functional verification of a specification through simulation, first performance evaluation of a tentative design, and sometimes automatic microprogram generation or even automatic high level synthesis. As there was apparently no market for HDL's, the ECAD vendors did not care about them, start-up companies were seldom able to survive in this area, and large users of proprietary tools were spending more and more people and money just to maintain their internal system.

A spline is a thin flexible strip composed of a material such as bamboo or steel that can be bent to pass through or near given points in the plane, or in 3-space in a smooth manner. Mechanical engineers and drafting specialists find such (physical) splines useful in designing and in drawing plans for a wide variety of objects, such as for hulls of boats or for the bodies of automobiles where smooth curves need to be specified. These days, physi cal splines are largely replaced by computer software that can compute the desired curves (with appropriate encouragment). The same mathematical ideas used for computing "spline" curves can be extended to allow us to compute "spline" surfaces. The application ofthese mathematical ideas is rather widespread. Spline functions are central to computer graphics disciplines. Spline curves and surfaces are used in computer graphics renderings for both real and imagi nary objects. Computer-aided-design (CAD) systems depend on algorithms for computing spline functions, and splines are used in numerical analysis and statistics. Thus the construction of movies and computer games trav els side-by-side with the art of automobile design, sail construction, and architecture; and statisticians and applied mathematicians use splines as everyday computational tools, often divorced from graphic images."

There is much excitement in the design and verification community about assertion-based design. The question is, who should study assertion-based design? The emphatic answer is, both design and verification engineers. What may be unintuitive to many design engineers is that adding assertions to RTL code will actually reduce design time, while better documenting design intent. Every design engineer should read this book! Design engineers that add assertions to their design will not only reduce the time needed to complete a design, they will also reduce the number of interruptions from verification engineers to answer questions about design intent and to address verification suite mistakes. With design assertions in place, the majority of the interruptions from verification engineers will be related to actual design problems and the error feedback provided will be more useful to help identify design flaws. A design engineer who does not add assertions to the RTL code will spend more time with verification engineers explaining the design functionality and intended interface requirements, knowledge that is needed by the verification engineer to complete the job of testing the design.

Every pioneer takes large risks, hoping that the new frontier he seeks will provide the benefits of independence and good fortune. Don Tapscott is such a pioneer in the area of office automation. He has been a true pioneer, having entered the field in its early days and taken the risk of working not in technol ogy, which was fashionable, but in the field of the problems of organizations, which was less fashionable, but in many ways more important. The utilization of computers for data processing, accounting, inventory, and other "bread and butter" applications is now well entrenched in our society and culture. The process of designing such systems tends to focus on the needs of the company and the constraints of the equipment, leading to efficient systems with little tolerance for the variety of people who must use or interface with them. Within the office automation area, these methods do not work nearly as well. The frequency and amount of human interaction in the office environment, and the wide variety of situations and reactions there in, demands a different design methodology."

Motion and Structure from Image Sequences is invaluable reading for researchers, graduate students, and practicing engineers dealing with computer vision. It presents a balanced treatment of the theoretical and practical issues, including very recent results - some of which are published here for the first time. The topics covered in detail are: - image matching and optical flow computation - structure from stereo - structure from motion - motion estimation - integration of multiple views - motion modeling and prediction Aspects such as uniqueness of the solution, degeneracy conditions, error analysis, stability, optimality, and robustness are also investigated. These details together with the fact that the algorithms are accessible without necessarily studying the rest of the material, make this book particularly attractive to practitioners.

The Current state of expectations is that Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) will ulti mately determine the industrial growth of world nations within the next few decades. Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), Robotics together with Knowledge and Information Based Systems (KIBS) and Com munication Networks are expected to develop to a mature state to respond effectively to the managerial requirements of the factories of the future that are becoming highly integrated and complex. CIM represents a new production approach which will allow the factories to deliver a high variety of products at a low cost and with short production cycles. The new technologies for CIM are needed to develop manufacturing environments that are smarter, faster, close-cou pled, integrated, optimized, and flexible. Sophistication and a high degree of specialization in materials science, artificial intelligence, communications technology and knowledge-information science techniques are needed among others for the development of realizable and workable CIM systems that are capable of adjusting to volatile markets. CIM factories are to allow the production of a wide variety of similar products in small batches through standard but multi mission oriented designs that accommodate flexibility with specialized software."

Recent developments in computer graphics have largely involved the following: Integration of computer graphics and image analysis through computer data structure; integration of CAD/CAM as computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) through the design and simulation of manufacturing processes using computer graphics; progress in basic research on the modeling of complex and mathematical graphic objects, such as computational geometry, graphic data bases, hierarchical windows, and texture; use of computer graphics as an improved human interface to present information visually and multidimensionally; and advancement of industrial technology and computer art based on developments in the areas listed above. These trends are strongly reflected in the contents of the present volume either as papers dealing with one particular aspect of research or as multifaceted studies involving several different areas. The proceedings comprise thirty selected, previously unpublished original papers presented in nine chapters.

The rapid evolution and explosive growth of integrated circuit technology have impacted society more than any other technological development of the 20th century. Integrated circuits (ICs) are used universally and the expanding use of IC technology requires more accurate circuit analysis methods and tools, prompting the introduction of computers into the design process. The goal of this book is to build a firm foundation in the use of computer-assisted techniques for IC device and process design. Both practical and analytical viewpoints are stressed to give the reader the background necessary to appreciate CAD tools and to feel comfortable with their use. Technology CAD - Computer Simulation of IC Processes and Devices presents a unified discourse on process and device CAD as interrelated subjects, building on a wide range of experiences and applications of the SUPREM program. Chapter 1 focuses on the motivation for coupled process and device CAD. In Chapter 2 SUPREM III is introduced, and process CAD is discussed in terms of ion-implantation, impurity diffusion, and oxidation models.Chapter 3 introduces the Stanford device analysis program SEDAN III (SEmiconductor Device ANalysis). The next three chapters move into greater detail concerning device operating principles and analysis techniques. Chapter 4 reviews the classical formulation of pn junction theory and uses device analysis (SEDAN) both to evaluate some of the classical assumptions and to investigate the difficult problem of high level injection. Chapter 5 returns to MOS devices, reviews the first-order MOS theory, and introduces some important second-order effects. Chapter 6 considers the bipolar transistor. Chapter 7 considers the application of process simulation and device analysis to technology design. The BiCMOS process is selected as a useful design vehicle for two reasons. First, it allows the reader to pull together concepts from the entire book. Second, the inherent nature of BiCMOS technology offers real constraints and hence trade-offs which must be understood and accounted for.

Physical Design for Multichip Modules collects together a large body of important research work that has been conducted in recent years in the area of Multichip Module (MCM) design. The material consists of a survey of published results as well as original work by the authors. All major aspects of MCM physical design are discussed, including interconnect analysis and modeling, system partitioning and placement, and multilayer routing. For readers unfamiliar with MCMs, this book presents an overview of the different MCM technologies available today. An in-depth discussion of various recent approaches to interconnect analysis are also presented. Remaining chapters discuss the problems of partitioning, placement, and multilayer routing, with an emphasis on timing performance. For the first time, data from a wide range of sources is integrated to present a clear picture of a new, challenging and very important research area. For students and researchers looking for interesting research topics, open problems and suggestions for further research are clearly stated.Points of interest include: * Clear overview of MCM technology and its relationship to physical design; * Emphasis on performance-driven design, with a chapter devoted to recent techniques for rapid performance analysis and modeling of MCM interconnects; * Different approaches to multilayer MCM routing collected together and compared for the first time; * Explanation of algorithms is not overly mathematical, yet is detailed enough to give readers a clear understanding of the approach; * Quantitative data provided wherever possible for comparison of different approaches; * A comprehensive list of references to recent literature on MCMs provided.

New perspective technologies of genetic search and evolution simulation represent the kernel of this book. The authors wanted to show how these technologies are used for practical problems solution. This monograph is devoted to specialists of CAD, intellectual information technologies in science, biology, economics, sociology and others. It may be used by post-graduate students and students of specialties connected to the systems theory and system analysis methods, information science, optimization methods, operations investigation and solution-making.

This book is the first issue of a EUROGRAPHICS publication series in the field of computer graphics, an important field of research and a versatile tool for various application areas. The availability of powerful hardware at an affordable price and the evolution of high standard software have led to a rapidly increas ing expansion of computer graphics and the penetration of compu ter graphics techniques and systems into a wide range of applica tion areas. This book series will cover state-of-the-art surveys as well as scientific contributions on specific areas of research and develop ment. The first book in the series contains the Tutorial Notes of the EUROGRAPHICS '83 conference, held in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in September 1983. It covers four major aspects of computer graphics today: - The first part contains a detailed introduction into computer graphics, its concepts, its methods, its tools, and its devices. It gives an easy access for the newcomer to the field and it offers an overview of the state of the art in computer graphics. - The second part is devoted to interactive techniques. This is currently one of the most important fields of research in computer graphics. Important aspects of this research and its current state are reported. From the developments described here, in the near future powerful generally applicable user interface management systems are likely to evolve."

This book is an extension of one author's doctoral thesis on the false path problem. The work was begun with the idea of systematizing the various solutions to the false path problem that had been proposed in the literature, with a view to determining the computational expense of each versus the gain in accuracy. However, it became clear that some of the proposed approaches in the literature were wrong in that they under estimated the critical delay of some circuits under reasonable conditions. Further, some other approaches were vague and so of questionable accu racy. The focus of the research therefore shifted to establishing a theory (the viability theory) and algorithms which could be guaranteed correct, and then using this theory to justify (or not) existing approaches. Our quest was successful enough to justify presenting the full details in a book. After it was discovered that some existing approaches were wrong, it became apparent that the root of the difficulties lay in the attempts to balance computational efficiency and accuracy by separating the tempo ral and logical (or functional) behaviour of combinational circuits. This separation is the fruit of several unstated assumptions; first, that one can ignore the logical relationships of wires in a network when considering timing behaviour, and, second, that one can ignore timing considerations when attempting to discover the values of wires in a circuit."

This volume is a record of the Workshop on Window Management held at the Ruth erford Appleton Laboratory's Cosener's House between 29 April and 1 May 1985. The main impetus for the Workshop came from the Alvey Programme's Man Machine Interface Director who was concerned at the lack of a formal definition of window management and the lack of focus for research activities in this area. Win dow Management per se is not the complete problem in understanding interaction. However, the appearance of bitmap displays from a variety of vendors enabling an operator to work simultaneously with a number of applications on a single display has focussed attention on what the overall architecture for such a system should be and also on what the interfaces to both the application and operator should be. The format of the Workshop was to spend the first day with presentations from a number of invited speakers. The aim was to get the participants aware of the current state of the art and to highlight the main outstanding issues. The second day consisted of the Workshop participants splitting into three groups and discussing specific issues in depth. Plenary sessions helped to keep the individual groups work ing on similar lines. The third day concentrated on the individual groups presenting their results and interacting with the other groups to identify main areas of con sensus and also a framework for future work."

The proliferation and growth of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) has spawned many diverse and interesting technologies. One of the most prominent of these technologies is the VHSIC Hardware Description Language, or VHDL. VHDL permits designers of digital modules, components, systems, and even networks to describe their designs both structurally and behaviorally. VHDL also allows simulation of the designs in order to investigate their performance prior to actually implementing them in hardware. Having gained the ability to simulate designs once encoded in VHDL, designers were naturally confronted with the issue of testing these designs. VHDL did not explicitly address the requirement to insert particular digital waveforms, often termed test vectors or patterns, or to subsequently assess the correctness of the response from some digital entity. In a distributed design environment, or even in an isolated one where the design was subject to review or scrutiny by another organization, de-facto methods of testing and evaluating results proved faulty. The reason was a lack of standardization.When organization A designed a circuit and tested it with their self-developed test tools it had a certain behavior. When it was delivered to organization B and B tested it using their test tools, the behavior was different. Was the fault in the circuit, in A's tools, or in B's tools? The only way to resolve this was for both organizations to agree on a test apparatus, validate its correctness and use it consistently. While VHDL was an IEEE standard language, and consistency among myriad designers was fairly well guaranteed, no such standard existed for test waveform generation and assessment. Hence, the value of standardization in the design language was being negated by the lack of such a standard for testing. The Waveform and Vector Exchange Specification, or WAVES, was conceived and designed to solve this testing problem -- and it has. Being both a subset of VHDL itself, as well as an IEEE standard, it guarantees both conformity among multiple applications and easy integration with VHDL units under test (UUTs). Using WAVES and VHDL for Effective Design and Testing will serve many purposes.For the WAVES beginner, its tutorial will make the application of WAVES in typical, standard usage straightforward and convenient. For the more advanced user, the advanced topics will provide insight into the nuances of these useful capabilities. For all users, the tools, templates and examples given in the chapters, as well as on the companion disk, will provide a practical starting foundation for using WAVES and VHDL.

This book is based on lectures presented at an international workshop on geometric modeling held at Hewlett Packard GmbH in Boblingen, FRG, in June 1990. International experts from academia and industry were selected to speak on the most interesting topics in geometric modeling. The resulting papers, published in this volume, give a state-of-the-art survey of the relevant problems and issues. The following topics are discussed: - Methods for constructing surfaces on surfaces: four different solutions to the multidimen sional problem of constructing an interpolant from surface data are provided. - Surfaces in solid modeling: current results on the implementation of free-fonn solids in three well established solid models are reviewed. - Box splines and applications: an introduction to box spline methods for the representation of surfaces is given. Basic properties of box splines are derived, and refinement and evaluation methods for box splines are presented in detail. Shape preserving properties, the construction of non-rectangular box spline surfaces, applications to surface modeling, and imbedding problems, are discussed. - Advanced computer graphics techniques for volume visualization: the steps to be executed in the visualization process of volume data are described and tools are discussed that assist in handling this data. - Rational B-splines: an introduction to the representation of curves and surfaces using rational B-splines is given, together with a critical evaluation of their potential for industrial application."

This book is a collection of the best papers originally presented as state-of-the-art reports or tutorials at the EUROGRAPHICS'91 conference in Vienna. A choice has been made giving priority to information of lasting value. Another goal was to cover all aspects of computer graphics -except hardware -as completely as possible from modelling to advanced visualization and communication. The editors consider that the ten contributions by internationally renowned experts fulfil this goal perfectly. Some important problem areas are treated from different viewpoints thus enhancing and deepening the reader's perspective. Sabine Coquillart Wolfgang Strafier Peter Stucki Table of Contents l. Through the Cracks of the Solid Modeling Milestone 1 J arek R. Rossignac 2. Kinematics and Dynamics for Computer Animation 76 H. Ruder, T. Ertl, K. Gruber, M. Gunther, F. Hospach, M. Ruder, J. Subke, K. Widmayer 3. Dynamic Animation of Deformable Bodies 118 Marie-Paul Gascuel, Claude Puech 4. Stochastic Methods and Non-Fractal Applications 140 Huw Jones 5. State of the Art in Volume Visualization 166 Arie Kaufman 6. On the Theorey and Application of Stereolithographics in Scientific Visualization 178 Eric Hibbard, Michael Bauer, Margaret Bradshaw, Glenn Deardorff, Ken Hu, David Whitney 7. User Interface Management Systems: Present and Future 197 Michel Beaudouin-Lafon 8. Trends in Edge Detection Techniques 224 Eduard Antoniu 9.

Wave Pipelining: Theory and CMOS Implementation provides a coherent presentation of the theory of wave pipelined operation of digital circuits and discusses practical design techniques for the realization of wave pipelined circuits in CMOS technology. Wave pipeling is a timing methodology used in digital systems to enhance performance while conserving the number of data registers used. This is achieved by applying new data to the inputs of a combinatorial logic block before the previous outputs are available. In contrast to conventional pipelining, system performance is limited by differences in maximum and minimum circuit delay rather than maximum circuit delays. Realization of practical systems using this technique requires accurate system level and circuit level timing analysis. At the system level, timing constraints identifying valid regions of operation for correct clocking of wave pipelined circuits are presented. Both single stage and multiple stage systems including feedback are considered. At the circuit level, since performance is determined by the maximum circuit delay difference, highly accurate estimates of both maximum and minimum delays are needed.Thus, timing analysis based on traditional gate delay models is not sufficient. For CMOS circuits, data dependent delay models considering the effect of simultaneous multiple input switchings must be used. An algorithm using these delay models for accurate analysis of small to medium sized circuits is implemented in a prototype timing analyzer, XTV. Results are given for a set of benchmark circuits.

The design of asynchronous circuits is increasingly important in solving problems such as complexity management, modularity, power consumption and clock distribution in large digital integrated circuits. Since the second half of the 1980s asynchronous circuits have been the subject of a great deal of research following a period of relative oblivion. The lack of interest in asynchronous techniques was motivated by the progressive shift towards synchronous design techniques that had much more structure and were much easier to verify and synthesize. System design requirements made it impossible to totally eliminate the use of asynchronous circuits. Given the objective difficulty encountered by designers, the asynchronous components of electronic systems, such as interfaces, became a serious bottleneck in the design process. The use of new models and some theoretical breakthroughs made it possible to develop asynchronous design techniques that were reliable and effective.Algorithms for Synthesis and Testing of Asynchronous Circuits describes a variety of mathematical models and of algorithms that form the backbone and the body of a new design methodology for asynchronous design. The book is intended for asynchronous hardware designers, for computer-aided tool experts, and for digital designers interested in exploring the possibility of designing asynchronous circuits. It requires a solid mathematical background in discrete event systems and algorithms. While the book has not been written as a textbook, it could nevertheless be used as a reference book in an advanced course in logic synthesis or asynchronous design. Algorithms for Synthesis and Testing of Asynchronous Circuits also includes an extensive literature review, which summarizes and compares classical papers from the 1960s with the most recent developments in the areas of asynchronous circuit design testing and verification. The validity and utility of employment tests have become entangled in the debate over the 1991 Civil Rights Bill.Worried about compliance with new federal guidelines for test validity, and concerned about possible lawsuits, the business world became wary of pre-employment testing in the early 1980s, but the use of employment testing increased throughout that decade.

Computer-aided design has come of age in the magnetic devices industry. From its early beginnings in the 1960s, when the precision needs of the experimental physics community first created a need for computational aids to magnet design, CAD software has grown to occupy an important spot in the industrial designer's tool kit. Numerous commercial CAD systems are now available for magnetics work, and many more software packages are used in-house by large industrial firms. While their capabilities vary, all these software systems share a very substantial common core of both methodology and objec tives. The present need, particularly in medium-sized and nonspecialist firms, is for an understanding of how to make effective use of these new and immensely powerful tools: what approximations are inherent in the methods, what quantities can be calculated, and how to relate the com puted results to the needs of the designer. These new analysis techniques profoundly affect the designer's approach to problems, since the analytic tools available exert a strong influence on the conceptual models people build, and these in turn dictate the manner in which they formulate prob lems. The impact of CAD is just beginning to be felt industrially, and the authors believe this is an early, but not too early, time to collect together some of the experience which has now accumulated among industrial and research users of magnetics analysis systems."

The changing manufacturing environment requires more responsive and adaptable manufacturing systems. The theme of the 4th International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual production (CARV2011) is "Enabling Manufacturing Competitiveness and Economic Sustainability". Leading edge research and best implementation practices and experiences, which address these important issues and challenges, are presented. The proceedings include advances in manufacturing systems design, planning, evaluation, control and evolving paradigms such as mass customization, personalization, changeability, re-configurability and flexibility. New and important concepts such as the dynamic product families and platforms, co-evolution of products and systems, and methods for enhancing manufacturing systems' economic sustainability and prolonging their life to produce more than one product generation are treated. Enablers of change in manufacturing systems, production volume and capability scalability and managing the volatility of markets, competition among global enterprises and the increasing complexity of products, manufacturing systems and management strategies are discussed. Industry challenges and future directions for research and development needed to help both practitioners and academicians are presented.

Intelligent robotics has become the focus of extensive research activity. This effort has been motivated by the wide variety of applications that can benefit from the developments. These applications often involve mobile robots, multiple robots working and interacting in the same work area, and operations in hazardous environments like nuclear power plants. Applications in the consumer and service sectors are also attracting interest. These applications have highlighted the importance of performance, safety, reliability, and fault tolerance. This volume is a selection of papers from a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in July 1989 with a focus on active perception and robot vision. The papers deal with such issues as motion understanding, 3-D data analysis, error minimization, object and environment modeling, object detection and recognition, parallel and real-time vision, and data fusion. The paradigm underlying the papers is that robotic systems require repeated and hierarchical application of the perception-planning-action cycle. The primary focus of the papers is the perception part of the cycle. Issues related to complete implementations are also discussed.

Perhaps nothing characterizes the inherent heterogeneity in embedded sys tems than the ability to choose between hardware and software implementations of a given system function. Indeed, most embedded systems at their core repre sent a careful division and design of hardware and software parts of the system To do this task effectively, models and methods are necessary functionality. to capture application behavior, needs and system implementation constraints. Formal modeling can be valuable in addressing these tasks. As with most engineering domains, co-design practice defines the state of the it seeks to add new capabilities in system conceptualization, mod art, though eling, optimization and implementation. These advances -particularly those related to synthesis and verification tasks -direct1y depend upon formal under standing of system behavior and performance measures. Current practice in system modeling relies upon exploiting high-level programming frameworks, such as SystemC, EstereI, to capture design at increasingly higher levels of ab straction and attempts to reduce the system implementation task. While raising the abstraction levels for design and verification tasks, to be really useful, these approaches must also provide for reuse, adaptation of the existing intellectual property (IP) blocks."