Complete visual specification and animation of protocols

Abstract

This article discusses the application of Pictorial Janus (PJ) for the rapid development and analysis of protocols by animation and complete visualization. In order to make PJ applicable in the context of hardware description we first extend PJ by timing facilities (Timed PJ) and introduce an approach for integrating VHDL models into this visual framework preserving the simulation semantics of VHDL. We finally give the example of the specification and animation of a non interlocked protocol.