• Presents the best pedagogical illustration of embedded system design with a synchronous dataflow programming language;
• Offers a complete overview of a language and its associated analysis techniques for the design of multi-clocked embedded systems;
• Describes a formal specification language that provides users with design and analysis tools to guarantee the reliability of safety-critical, embedded systems;
• Enables "correct-by-construction" designs for modern embedded systems, built on distributed architectures.

Among synchronous programming paradigms, Polychrony stands out for its ability to specify dataflow relationally, its freedom from single clock driven semantics, and its clock calculus that allows one to infer when single clock driven sequential software implementation is implied by the specification, and when refinements are required for such implementation. The SIGNAL language embodies Polychrony. There has been a void in the literature for a good single source which researchers can refer to, for learning the SIGNAL language, its semantics, and its usage.

Abdoulaye Gamatié has successfully used the SIGNAL language and the Polychrony toolset to implement realisticdesigns in the past. I believe that his book on the SIGNAL language will certainly be a very valuable resource for anyone interested in learning the SIGNAL language and its multi-clock semantics, and how to use it to specify and implement embedded software in a refinement methodology supported by extensive theory and tools developed at INRIA, Rennes.

----- Sandeep Shukla, Virginia Polytechnic and State University