The Slide Simulator: A Facility for the Design and Analysis of Computer Interconnections

Abstract

Interconnection design can have a profound effect on the price and performance of a digital system. This paper describes a new simulation facility that is designed to allow the user to describe and simulate the behavior of an interconnected system. The simulator provides the capability to devise, debug, and evaluate digital interconnection schemes. The user first writes a description of the system interconnections using the hardware descriptive language SLIDE. The UNIBUS, for example, has been described in SLIDE. The description is then compiled into SIMULA code, and linked by the user with other SIMULA or SLIDE modules which probabilistically or deterministically modet the hardware that drives the interconnections. The simulation then proceeds under interactive user control.