46. A program storage device readable by a processor-based system, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the processor-based system machine to perform a method, comprising: optimizing a system-level description of the functionality and timing of a digital system, wherein the system-level description comprises a plurality of tasks, wherein optimizing includes separately performing design-time intra-task scheduling for at least two of the tasks to generate a plurality of intra-task schedules for each of the tasks, wherein the plurality of intra-task schedules are a subset of all possible intra-task schedules, and wherein the subset defines cost-cycle budget tradeoff information.
48. The program storage device of claim 46 , wherein the description comprises a system-level description wherein non-deterministic behavior of the digital system is modeled by interacting the tasks, while each of the tasks describe part of the deterministic behavior of the digital system.