**4.1 Applications to design**

The difficulty in designing and debugging of such systems necessitates practical simulation tools and simplified metrics such as the entropy measures described here. Both of these entropy metrics are potentially useful during system development as an *analysis of alternatives* or *design space exploration* tool. If several concurrent options are available for a design, either of these metric could provide criteria to establish the least complex design. In that sense, it serves as a simple utility function to measure unwanted or creeping complexity much like a duty-cycle utilization measures processor contention.
