Automatic Methods for the Refinement of System Models

Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive overview of automatic model refinement, which helps readers close the gap between initial textual specification and its desired implementation. The authors enable readers to follow two “directions” for refinement: Vertical refinement, for adding detail and precision to single description for a given model and Horizontal refinement, which considers several views on one level of abstraction, refining the system specification by dedicated descriptions for structure or behavior. The discussion includes several methods which support designers of electronic systems in this refinement process, including verification methods to check automatically whether a refinement has been conducted as intended.