In the past few decades Computer Hardware Description Languages (CHDLs) have been a rapidly expanding subject area due to a number of factors, including the advancing complexity of digital electronics, the increasing prevalence of generic and programmable components of software-hardware and the migration of VLSI design to high level synthesis based on HDLs. Currently the subject has reached the consolidation phase in which languages and standards are being increasingly used, at the same time as the scope is being broadened to additional application areas. This book presents the latest developments in this area and provides a forum from which readers can learn from the past and look forward to what the future holds.

Inhalt
1 Synchronous languages for hardware and software reactive systems.- 2 Towards a complete design method for embedded systems using Predicate/Transition-Nets.- 3 Simplifying data operations for formal verification.- 4 CTL and equivalent sublanguages of CTL.- 5 Verifying linear temporal properties of data intensive controllers using finite instantiations.- 6 A high-level language for programming complex temporal behaviors and its translation into synchronous circuits (poster abstract).- 7 System-level hardware design with ?-charts (poster abstract).- 8 Interface synthesis in embedded hardware-software systems (poster abstract).- 9 TripleS-a formal validation environment for functional specifications (poster abstract).- 10 SOFHIA: a CAD environment to design digital control systems (poster abstract).- 11 Compiling the language BALSA to delay insensitive hardware (poster abstract).- 12 High-level synthesis of structured data paths (poster abstract).- 13 Characterizing a portable subset of behavioural VHDL-93.- 14 Algebra of communicating timing charts for describing and verifying hardware interfaces.- 15 A formal proof of absence of deadlock for any acyclic network of PCI buses.- 16 Behavioural modelling of sampled-data with HDL-A and ABSynth.- 17 Hardware description languages in practical design flows.- 18 VHDL generation from SDL specification.- 19 Exploiting isomorphism for speeding up instance-binding in an integrated scheduling allocation and assignment approach to architectural synthesis.- 20 Verification of large systems in silicon (special talk).- 21 The Shall Design test Development model for hardware systems.- 22 Modular operational semantic specification of transport triggered architectures.- 23 The world of I/O: a rich application area for formal methods(invited talk).- 24 Abstract modelling of asynchronous micropipeline systems using Rainbow.- 25 A new partial order reduction algorithm for concurrent system verification (short talk).- 26 VHDL power simulator: power analysis at gate level.- 27 Object oriented extensions to VHDL. the LaMI proposal.- Index of contributors.- Keyword index.