Computerarchitecturepresentlyfacesanunprecedentedrevolution: Thestep from monolithic processors towards multi-core ICs, motivated by the ever - creasingneedforpowerandenergyef ciencyinnanoelectronics. Whetheryou prefer to call it MPSoC (multi-processor system-on-chip) or CMP (chip mul- processor), no doubt this revolution affects large domains of both computer science and electronics, and it poses many new interdisciplinary challenges. For instance, ef cient programming models and tools for MPSoC are largely an open issue: "Multi-core platforms are a reality ¿ but where is the software support" (R. Lauwereins, IMEC). Solving it will require enormous research efforts as well as the education of a whole new breed of software engineers that bring the results from universities into industrial practice. Atthesametime,thedesignofcomplexMPSoCarchitecturesisanextremely time-consuming task, particularly in the wireless and multimedia application