Development and application of design transformations in ForSyDe [high level synthesis]

The ForSyDe methodology has been developed for system level design. Starting with a formal specification model, that captures the functionality of the system at a high abstraction level, it provides formal design transformation methods for a transparent refinement process of the system model into an implementation model that is optimized for synthesis. The main contribution of this paper is the formal treatment of transformational design refinement. Using the formal semantics of ForSyDe processes we introduce the term characteristic function to be able to define and classify transformations as either semantic preserving or design decision. We also illustrate how we can incorporate classical synthesis techniques that have traditionally been used with control/data-flow graphs as ForSyDe transformations. Thus, our approach avoids discontinuities since it moves design refinement into the domain of the specification model.