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The book provides a coherent view of system synthesis which includes the high-level and the system-level system tasks. In particular, it emphasizes the use of a transformational approach to system synthesis using VHDL specifications. Especially, the authors discuss issues concerning the use of VHDL for high-level and system-level synthesis which include aspects from the compilation of VHDL into an internal design representation. The first two chapters of the book give an introduction to the typical design process and the VHDL language focussing on those features of VHDL which are relevant for system synthesis. Chapter 3 summarizes the fundamental issues of high-level synthesis as e.g. operation scheduling (list scheduling, force directed scheduling, transformation based scheduling), data path allocation and binding (integer programming approach, clique partitioning and graph colouring approach, left edge algorithm), and controller synthesis. Chapter 4 presents system-level synthesis which includes architecture selection, system partitioning, communication synthesis, and hardware/software co-design. As many of these problems can be formulated as optimization problems, Chapter 5 concentrates on optimization heuristics (tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms,\dots). The rest of the book handles a transformational approach to system synthesis which is based on Petri Nets as design representation model. The first part (Chapter 1---5) of the book can be used for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in the area of design automation. The rest of the book seems to be intended for CAD developers and researchers who are interested in new algorithms and techniques supporting modern design tools and methodologies.