Rapid prototyping of hardware systems via model reuse

The increasing productivity gap affecting the progress of electronic system design is a sufficient motivation to investigate further solutions to avoid this problem. As an immediately available solution, the application of reuse techniques is widely recognized. By reusing designs, productivity is increased because designers do not have to reinvent large portions of the design. Design reuse is becoming a big market and involves people, concepts, methods and tools. This paper is aimed at providing mechanisms for promoting effective reuse of hardware system specifications. The importance and benefits of reusability of high-level hardware models, and our proposed strategy for reusing graphical specifications are presented.