APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING BEHAVIORAL MODELING IN HARDWARE EMULATION AND SIMULATION ENVIRONMENTS

In accordance with the present invention, a system for providing high-speed sequential modeling in a simulator or emulator environment is provided. The system includes a sequential control system (microprocessor board) which is attached directly to an emulator. The sequential control system cycles or operates at a higher speed than the emulator. This allows the sequential control system to execute multiple commands during each hardware emulation cycle so that the concurrent operations model within the accelerator/emulator and the sequential operations model within the sequential control system achieve a high degree of parallel operation, greatly enhancing system speed and performance. Further, the system includes direct high-speed connections between the sequential control system and the host workstation so that the control system can be programmed to execute a sequential model and/or to exchange data directly with the host without actually passing any information through the hardware emulator/accelerator. The sequential control system software is written in a high level programming language rather than a hardware description language. In addition, the sequential control system allows reuse of the board to model many different types of systems and hardware components. This combination of reusability, ease of model creation, and reduced communication overhead provides increased flexibility, reduced costs, and greater modeling efficiency than is available using other known systems. The system and method of the present invention effectively and efficiently merges sequential models with hardware emulation/acceleration. In addition, the new system is compatible with existing simulation/emulation environments and equipment such as IBM's ET3.