Patent ID: 6952825

Claim:
A method comprising: defining a set of first process threads in a description language, wherein the set defines a first representation of the specification of an essentially digital system, wherein each first process thread represents a process carried out by the digital system, and wherein the description language is an object-oriented programming language, the defining comprising: (1) associating with each of the first process threads a variable whose value represents local timing for that thread, wherein the content of the variable is indicative of an amount of time that is required to perform the process that is represented by the thread in the digital system; (2) concurrently creating second process threads being refinements of at least part of the first process threads and having more detail while remaining within the specification of the digital system, the second process threads defining a second representation of the digital system; (3) assigning to each new second process thread a value for the local timing variable; and (4) repeating steps 2 and 3 to produce second process threads of greater detail defining further representations of the digital system until the granularity of the representation of the digital system provided by the refined process threads is finer than a predetermined threshold.