In order to create hardware-independent components, it is necessary to implement them for every processor you may use. Without the inheritance process, this would mean a lot of repeated coding.
The basic hardware components provided within Processor Expert cover the entire functionality of processors, and are hardware independent (in fact, they are hardware dependent, but you have drivers for all CPUs supported in your version of Processor Expert). By inheriting from these components, you don't need any more to deal with the low-level part of your components. By writing the high-level part of the algorithm, using inherited hardware independent methods and events of components, you can keep the new component hardware-independent.
CDE allows the creation of a new inherited component or directly adds inheritance to an already-created component by selecting the methods and events to inherit from (by creating interfaces). Your own components can also be used for further inheritance by other components, providing a high level of re-usability to your work.
This chapter explains: