Forum on Specification and Design Languages

About Forum on Specification and Design Languages

Overview: Europe's Forum for the Languages That Describe Systems

Forum on Specification and Design Languages — FDL — is an annual European research forum, and this record is its proceedings series. It is not a journal: it has no issues, no editor-in-chief, no article processing charge and no Journal Impact Factor. It is the published record of a conference community concerned with a foundational question of modern engineering — in what language should a complex system be described, so that the description can be modelled, simulated, analysed, verified and ultimately built?

The systems in question are principally electronic and embedded: integrated circuits, systems-on-chip, hardware and software embedded systems, cyber-physical and mixed-technology systems. The languages in question range from hardware description languages and system-level languages such as SystemC, through modelling languages and the Unified Modeling Language, to formal specification languages whose mathematics allow a property of a design to be proved rather than merely tested. FDL's distinctive position is that it treats the language itself — its semantics, its tools, its fit to a design method — as the research object, where a design conference might treat language merely as the medium.

The ISSN recorded for the proceedings series is 1636-9874, carried on IEEE proceedings volumes of the forum including the 2019, 2021 and 2025 editions. The publisher line requires care, and this profile gives it care: the forum was originated and long sponsored by ECSI, the European Electronic Chips and Systems Design Initiative; editions have appeared through different channels, including IET seminar digests around 2010 and IEEE proceedings in recent years, with selected and extended contributions also published as Springer books. The Journals World record names IEEE Computer Society as publisher, which matches the modern IEEE proceedings, but a citation from 2010 or from a Springer selected-papers volume belongs to a different channel of the same forum, not to a different conference.

History: Since 1998, a European Forum

Springer, introducing a volume of selected FDL 2005 contributions, records that since its inception in 1998 FDL established itself as the premier European forum to exchange experiences and learn about new trends in the application of languages and models for the specification and modelling of electronic systems. That self-description has been repeated, in substance, by hosts and sponsors ever since: the European Electronic Chips and Systems Design Initiative, ECSI, is described in 2006 host material as the originator and major sponsor of the yearly event, held that year at TU Darmstadt in Germany on 19–22 September.

The forum's rhythm is a September meeting in a European academic city, and its numbering lets a reader date a volume at a glance. The thirteenth edition met in Southampton, United Kingdom in September 2010; the twenty-first in Munich, Germany on 10–12 September 2018; the twenty-fifth in Linz, Austria on 14–16 September 2022; and the twenty-seventh at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden on 4–6 September 2024. Other editions in that run include Oldenburg in 2011, Vienna in 2012, Paris in 2013, Bremen in 2016, Southampton again in 2019 (2–4 September), and Antibes, France in 2021 as the 24th IEEE Forum on Specification and Design Languages. The 2025 proceedings volume, published with IEEE cataloguing and ISSN 1636-9874, confirms the series' continuation into the present decade.

Alongside the proceedings, a parallel book tradition grew up: volumes such as Advances in Design and Specification Languages for SoCs from FDL 2004, Applications of Specification and Design Languages for SoCs from FDL 2005, System Specification and Design Languages from FDL 2010, and Languages, Design Methods, and Tools for Electronic System Design from FDL 2018 collect the best forum papers in revised and extended form. A researcher who finds a Springer chapter and an IEEE paper with similar titles is usually looking at two lives of the same work — the conference version and its extended book descendant — and should cite the one actually read.

Aims and Scope

FDL describes itself as an international event where academics and industry exchange results, experiences, advances and new trends related to languages, tools and techniques for developing software and hardware systems, targeting cyber-physical, distributed, real-time and embedded systems, mechatronics, the Internet of Things and reactive systems. Its recent calls organise the field into four scientific areas, which this profile adopts and explains.

Languages

The first area concerns the languages themselves: domain-specific languages for software, for execution platforms, for allocation, for environment and for contracts; abstraction and refinement; and the design methods, frameworks and tools that accompany a language. A language paper at FDL might propose a notation for a class of systems that existing languages describe badly, extend a standard language toward a new domain such as smart contracts and distributed ledgers, or report the industrial experience that reveals where a language's abstractions leak. The test applied by this community is pragmatic as well as formal: a language succeeds if real designers can say true and useful things in it.

Semantics

The second area asks what a description means. Formal definitions, compilers, interpreters, typing, abstraction and refinement, specification frameworks and model transformation all belong here, together with models of computation that handle concurrency and time — dataflow, synchronous and functional languages and event-based languages are named in recent calls. Semantics is the forum's conscience: without it, a simulation result is an opinion about one tool's behaviour, whereas with it, results can be compared, composed and proved. Papers in this area give the rest of the forum the firm ground it stands on.

Verification and analysis

The third area checks designs against intentions: innovative static analysis, testing, debugging, model checking, machine-learning-based analysis and design space exploration, with their underlying models, tools and frameworks. Assertion-based design and verification, a named strength of the FDL 2018 selected volume, belongs here, as do formal and semi-formal methods for modelling, specification and verification at system level. In an era of heterogeneous systems-on-chip built from processors, accelerators, GPUs and FPGAs, this area carries the forum's promise that complexity can be mastered rather than merely endured.

Simulation

The fourth area makes descriptions executable: innovative simulation techniques, virtual prototypes, digital twins, collaborative simulation, hybrid simulation and runtime abstraction and refinement, with attention to the efficiency and correctness of simulations and their tools. Virtual prototyping lets software be developed before silicon exists; a digital twin lets a running system be shadowed by its model. Cross-fertilisation between all four areas, in the context of systems engineering, is explicitly welcomed by the call, and case studies from healthcare, automotive and Industry 4.0 ground the theory in systems that must not fail.

Publication Details

• Title as recorded: Forum on Specification and Design Languages (FDL); recent proceedings also style it Forum on Specification & Design Languages
• ISSN: 1636-9874, printed on IEEE proceedings volumes including 2019 (Southampton), 2021 and 2025 editions
• Publisher of the modern proceedings: IEEE — the Journals World record names IEEE Computer Society, United States. Historical channels differ: FDL 2010 appeared in the IET Seminar Digests series through the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and selected extended papers appear in Springer edited books
• Sponsorship and origin: ECSI, the European Electronic Chips and Systems Design Initiative, is the originator and major sponsor of the forum
• Frequency: annual, normally in September, in a rotating European venue
• Language: English
• Open access: not an open-access series as a whole. IEEE proceedings are distributed under IEEE terms; the Springer selected-papers books are commercial edited volumes
• Article processing charge: none — this is a conference proceedings series, not a journal, and no APC applies

Paper categories from recent calls show how the forum grades maturity. Research papers — original contributions with clear research content and evaluation — are set at eight pages plus references in the FDL 2024 call, and presented papers are submitted for inclusion in IEEE Xplore subject to its scope and quality requirements. The same calls provide for work-in-progress contributions and a PhD forum, reflecting FDL's stated wish to stimulate scientific and controversial discussion between topics at different maturity levels. Page limits and categories are edition facts and must be confirmed on the call for the year of submission.

Editorial and Governance Model

FDL is governed as a conference, not edited as a journal. Each edition has general and program leadership drawn from its host institution and the international community, a technical program committee that reviews submissions in the forum's scientific areas, and the continuing sponsorship of ECSI behind the series. The Springer selected-papers volumes name their own editors — the FDL 2018 volume, for example, was edited by Tom J. Kazmierski of the University of Southampton, Sebastian Steinhorst of the Technical University of Munich and Daniel Große of the University of Bremen and DFKI — and those book editors should not be mistaken for editors of the proceedings series as a whole.

Review is conference peer review. A paper is submitted to an edition, assessed for originality, technical soundness and relevance to specification and design languages, presented orally if accepted, and published in that year's proceedings for submission to IEEE Xplore. The forum's culture places unusual weight on discussion: its calls state that FDL stimulates scientific and controversial discussions within and between its topics, which is why work-in-progress and PhD forum categories exist alongside full research papers. For a field whose central artefacts are languages — things a community must agree to speak — that argumentative, communal model is not incidental; it is how a language earns adoption.

Indexing, Abstracting and Access

Modern FDL proceedings are principally accessed through IEEE Xplore, where the forum's papers carry IEEE cataloguing — the 2021 volume, for instance, is IEEE catalog number CFP2126E with online ISBN 978-1-6654-1825-6 and ISSN 1636-9874 — and print-on-demand copies of collected volumes are distributed by Curran Associates. The series is tracked by SCImago and Scopus as a conference proceedings title, the source of the indicators below, and FDL papers are extensively indexed by DBLP, the computer science bibliography, which many researchers in this field treat as their first discovery tool.

A complete search must follow the forum's three channels. IEEE Xplore holds the modern proceedings; the IET holds the seminar-digest era around 2010; and SpringerLink holds the selected-papers books, each with its own book DOI, in which the strongest forum work reappears in extended form. Searching only one channel, or searching the forum's name without allowing for its variant titles — Forum on Specification and Design Languages, Forum on Specification & Design Languages, and in 2008 Forum on Specification, Verification and Design Languages — will silently lose part of the record.

Metrics: Reading the Indicators

Catalogue data for this record list an h-index of 15 and an SJR of 0.219. The h-index means fifteen papers across the indexed history of the series have each been cited at least fifteen times. For a specialist European forum in a niche of electronic design automation, that figure reflects a community whose influence travels substantially through tools, standards and industrial method — through the languages engineers actually adopt — rather than through citation alone. SystemC, model-driven engineering and assertion-based verification, all recurring FDL themes, changed daily practice in chip design in ways no citation count for a single proceedings series can represent.

SJR of 0.219 is SCImago's prestige-weighted measure and is suitable only for comparison with similar proceedings in the same category and period. The series has no Journal Impact Factor, and this profile claims none. Readers who need to demonstrate the standing of an FDL paper are better served by the paper's own citations, by the existence of an extended Springer book version where one exists, and by the forum's longevity — a meeting sustained by its community since 1998 has already passed the hardest peer review of all.

Submitting a Paper to FDL

Submission is to a specific edition, through that edition's official call — the 2024 call, hosted at KTH in Stockholm, set a paper submission deadline in May 2024 for a September conference, with special session proposals due earlier and work-in-progress and PhD forum deadlines in July, a calendar shape typical of the series. Categories in recent calls include research papers of eight pages plus references, work-in-progress papers and PhD forum contributions, all presented orally at the conference and submitted for inclusion in IEEE Xplore subject to its requirements. Confirm every date, length and category on the live call for your target year; this profile does not carry a current deadline because none can responsibly be generalised across editions.

A persuasive FDL paper makes its language contribution explicit. It says what can now be described, modelled, simulated or verified that could not be handled as well before; it grounds the claim in semantics or in a tool, not only in examples; and it tests the idea on a system with real complexity — a heterogeneous platform, a cyber-physical case study from automotive, healthcare or Industry 4.0, or a design whose verification genuinely strained previous methods. Papers that present a tool without a language idea, or a language without any account of its meaning or use, tend to fall between the forum's areas; the calls' explicit welcome for cross-area work is an invitation to connect language, semantics, verification and simulation in a single, argued contribution.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is FDL a journal?

No. It is an annual conference — the Forum on Specification and Design Languages — and this record is its proceedings series. It has an ISSN and is indexed as a continuing title, but it has no journal issues, editor-in-chief, Impact Factor or APC.

When did FDL begin, and who started it?

FDL began in 1998 and established itself as a European forum for specification and design languages. ECSI, the European Electronic Chips and Systems Design Initiative, is its originator and major sponsor.

What is the ISSN?

ISSN 1636-9874, carried on the IEEE proceedings volumes of the forum, including the 2019, 2021 and 2025 editions.

Why do some FDL papers appear in Springer books?

Selected, revised and extended versions of the best forum papers are published as Springer edited volumes, such as the volumes drawn from FDL 2004, 2005, 2010 and 2018. The book chapter and the proceedings paper are related but distinct publications; cite the version you read.

Who publishes the proceedings?

Modern editions are published through IEEE and distributed in IEEE Xplore, with print-on-demand through Curran Associates. The 2010 edition appeared in the IET Seminar Digests series. The Journals World record names IEEE Computer Society for the current series.

What topics fit FDL?

Languages and formalisms for model-based system design; semantics; verification and analysis including model checking and assertion-based design; and simulation including virtual prototypes and digital twins — applied to integrated circuits, embedded and cyber-physical systems and systems-on-chip.

How long is a research paper?

Recent calls set research papers at eight pages plus references. Work-in-progress and PhD forum categories have their own limits. Always use the call for the edition you are submitting to.

Conclusion

Forum on Specification and Design Languages has spent more than twenty-five years on the proposition that the languages in which engineers describe systems determine what those systems can safely become. Its proceedings, published in the modern era by IEEE under ISSN 1636-9874, its seminar-digest volumes and its Springer selected-papers books together trace the rise of system-level design: from hardware description, through SystemC and model-driven engineering, to digital twins and the verification of cyber-physical systems. Read as a proceedings series — by edition, by scientific area, and alongside its extended book versions — it offers the clearest single record of how the electronic design community learned to speak about complexity precisely enough to build it.

Reading FDL Alongside Its Neighbouring Venues

New readers sometimes ask how FDL differs from the larger design automation conferences with which it shares authors, and the distinction is worth stating plainly because it determines which venue a paper belongs in. A general design automation conference asks principally what a design does and whether a tool can produce or check it faster; FDL asks, before either of those questions, in what language the design, its environment and its intended properties are expressed, and whether that language has a meaning precise enough for simulation, analysis and verification to agree with one another. That is why a contribution that would be a minor notation detail elsewhere can be a central result here, and why an impressive tool demonstration without a language or semantics claim can feel incomplete to this audience. It is also why FDL papers repay reading by engineers outside electronic design: the same problems of domain-specific language design, model transformation, executable specification and trustworthy simulation now appear in automotive systems, robotics, digital twins and smart contracts, all of which recent FDL calls explicitly welcome. The forum's European, discussion-led format has kept those cross-domain conversations going since 1998, long enough for ideas first argued in its sessions to become ordinary industrial practice.

Profile marker: DEPTH-BATCH254. This profile describes a conference proceedings series, not a journal. It was prepared from official conference, publisher and bibliographic sources listed in the accompanying sources file, and it was checked against the live record for this post.