1. A method for characterizing a circuit at a hardware level, comprising the steps of: creating a behavioral level description of said circuit; creating a netlist from said behavioral level description; creating reference equations from said netlist; translating said reference equations into numeric C-code; translating said reference equations into symbolic C-code; comparing said symbolic C-code to said numeric C-code to validate said symbolic C-code; and translating said reference equations into numeric HDL-code.