In many embedded systems types the separation process for deploying the applications as software and hardware executable units, called partitioning is crucial. This is due to the fact that partitioning decisions impact the overall life cycle of the systems. In industry it is common practice to take partitioning decisions in an early stage of the design, based on hardware and software designers expertise. We propose a new methodology as a combination of modelbased and component-based approaches

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... hich enables a late partitioning decisions based on high level system requirements and project constrains. The final partitioning is decided based on a multi-property analysis approach. Here, we focus on the formalization of the overall process and in particular on the definition of a comprehensive system metamodel. This is meant to support modelling approaches suitable for enabling both the partitioning and reuse. An industrial case study is used to illustrate the approach.