System level design methodology

There are many fundamental problems in the design of object-oriented methods that support the development of formal executable models on a system level, and that are suitable for hardware/software co-specification. System level description formalisms should combine concepts expressive enough to model the essentials of a system on the right level of abstraction. This paper reports experiences in developing a specification and design method SHE (Software/Hardware Engineering) which is based on a formal language POOSL (Parallel Object-Oriented Specification Language). The method offers a path from an informal specification to a unified formal model that enables evaluation of system properties. This paper describes concrete new results as well as an approach towards research on system level methodology.