Introduction

Abstract

Design automation is a service to the designer in the first place [131]. It facilitates the design of increasingly complex systems in less time. This is typically achieved by raising the level of abstraction at which the design is specified [ 133]. Advancing to the system-level requires new design methodologies. They have to be developed along realistic application examples, or as Minsky and Papert [ 138] have put it:

“Good theories rarely develop outside the context of a background of well-understood real problems and special cases. Without such a foundation, one gets either the vacuous generality of a theory with more definitions than theorems — or a mathematically elegant theory with no application to reality. Accordingly, our best course would seem to be to strive for a very thorough understanding of well-chosen particular situations in which these concepts are involved.”