Patent ID: 7124377

Claim:
A method of designing an essentially digital system (EDS) which executes at least one system task, comprising: inputting a system-level description of a functionality of the EDS including design parameters of the EDS for executing the system task; providing a first library of descriptions of hardware components, at least some of the hardware components being suitable for use in the EDS and each being suitable for executing a component task, at least a first group and a second group of components being at least partly made by semiconductor processing, wherein the manufacture of the first component group has at least one different semiconductor processing step compared with the manufacture of the second component group, the first library being structured such that for each of the first and second groups of components, performance parameters are accessible, performance parameters being at least a cost function and a constraint related to executing the component task; deriving from the first library two or more components from the first and/or second group belonging to a first trade-off set, each component belonging to the first trade-off set having a cost function-constraint combination, wherein any first combination within the first trade-off set is configured such that all combinations within the first trade-off set, having a cost function with a lower cost value than the first combination, have a higher value of the constraint than the first combination and such that all combinations within the first trade-off set, having a value of the constraint lower than that of the first combination, have a higher value of the cost function than that of the first combination; and constructing at least one design of the EDS compatible with the high level description from one or more components of the trade-off set.