ESTEVAL: a decision support tool for hardware/software system design

This paper considers a process and framework for the selection of hardware, software and firmware components for computer-based systems during the final stages of preliminary design. ESTEVAL, a prototype design decision support tool, was developed to investigate and illustrate the role of concurrent engineering in preliminary design, particularly system configuring. ESTEVAL provides a framework for design decision support for the selection of components for system configuring based on multiple design attributes.