Why Use Evolving Algebras for Hardware and Software Engineering?

In this paper I answer the question how evolving algebras can be used for the design and analysis of complex hardware and software systems. I present the salient features of this new method and illustrate them through several examples from my work on specification and verification of programming languages, compilers, protocols and architectures. The definition of a mathematical model for Hennessy and Patterson's RISC architecture DLX serves as a running example; this model is used in [24] to prove the correctness of instruction pipelining. I will point out the yet unexplored potential of the evolving algebra method for large-scale industrial applications.

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