Preface xix
how to realize determinate behavior in the presence of a nondeterministic underlying
model, and in Chapter 8 we give an alternative to nondeterministic models based on
stochastic processes.
Hence, we hope that students, teachers, researchers, and engineers will consider
the theoretical foundation worthy of a careful study to gain new insights and a better
understanding, and that they will find the illustrating examples and applications of
immediate practical use.
Acknowledgments
Writing this book took four years. During this time many people have helped and
contributed in different ways. It is in fact difficult to correctly trace back all ideas, con-
tributions and influences and I am afraid I am not able to do justice to everybody because
memories tend to change over time and distort the real cause of events. Anyway, I will
try hard to properly and gratefully list all inputs since they together significantly shaped
the final result and made it a much better book than I could have written otherwise.
At the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm I find the former Electronic
Systems Design Lab (ESDlab) and now the Laboratory of Electronics and Computer
Science (LECS) to be a very pleasant and inspiring research environment. I had the priv-
ilege to discuss with and benefit from many people there. Historically, my first attempt
to find common, deep principles beneath a vast and confusing variety of languages,
methods, tools and methodologies resulted in the formulation of the Rugby model.
Numerous discussions with Shashi Kumar, now at Jönköping University, Sweden, and
Ahmed Hemani, now at Acreo AB, Stockholm, Sweden, have been very exciting and
considerably deepened my understanding in this subject. The work of the graduate stu-
dents Andreas Johansson (now at Spirea AB, Stockholm), Ingo Sander and Per Bjuréus
(now at Saab Aerospace, Stockholm) has been a rich source of inspiration and ideas and
forced me more than once to reconsider basic assumptions and opinions. In particular,
Ingo Sander’s work on ForSyDe has countless connections to many of the topics and
concepts presented in this book. Thanks to Zhonghai Lu for his implementation case
studies, to Wenbiao Wu, to Ashish Singh who helped me better understand some of
the formal properties of the framework and to Tarvo Raudvere, who in countless hours
developed examples and exercises for the associated course. Some of his exercises also
made it into this book. The discussions with Luc Onana, Seif Haridi and Dilian Gurov
helped me better understand some of the mysteries of fixed point theory. With many
others at LECS I had many fruitful and exciting discussions with no direct connection
to the subject of this book but which nonetheless have influenced it. Among those
are Johnny Öberg, Peeter Ellervee, now at Tallinn Technical University, Mattias O’Nils,
now at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden, Abhijit K. Deb, and Björn Lisper,
now at Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden. Finally, I am very grateful to Hannu
Tenhunen for creating a very inspiring environment and for his never-ending stream of
ideas and suggestions on a variety of technical and non-technical issues.
Many thanks to the technical reviewers Edward A. Lee, University of California
at Berkeley, California, Grant Martin, Cadence Laboratories, Berkeley, California, and
Perry Alexander, University of Kansas, who read a draft of the manuscript and provided