Performance optimising hardware synthesis of shared objects

Acknowledgements Most of the ideas presented in this thesis have been developed while I was working for the EU project ODETTE (no. IST-1999-11476; funded by the European Commission under the 5th framework programm). First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Nebel, who encouraged my work, and who was certainly more convinced than I that this dissertation will be successfully completed. I am also grateful to Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Rosenstiel for his willingness to take the time to review this thesis. Many thanks to those colleagues and individuals at the Kuratorium OFFIS e.V. and the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg who took a share in enabling my work. Last but not least, I would like to address special thanks to my former colleague Mustafa C ¸ akır, who was a very good agony uncle when I was having hard times during the work on this thesis, and to whom, I am sure, I was a pain in the neck during this time.