Component based co-design and refinement

This paper focuses on entry design of complex systems and step-wise refinement. Indeed, design of embedded systems and digital circuits is moving to higher levels of abstraction and mix different technologies (hardware, software, etc). The entry design represents the highest abstract tier of the global system without implementation choices with respect to such and such technologies. At this level, the use of a formal specification language is more and more considered as the foundation of real verification process. What we would like to emphasize is that the refinement from that model to the point where the system could be implemented could be and should be formal too in order to design systems correct by proven construction. An illustration of this approach is the BHDL tool.