Using CDIF for concept-oriented rapid prototyping of electronic systems

An open environment for heterogeneous system design is presented supporting all design phases. Our approach separates front end tools with structural and behavioral modeling from back end tools for analysis, simulation and emulation. This separation is realized with the emerging CASE data interchange format CDIF. Though CDIF is intended as an interchange format for the interchange of modeling data between modeling tools, CDIF can also serve as an appropriate basis for back end tools. Our approach supports an overall system design and results in a unique representation of modeling data and a modeling technique based, tool independent analysis, simulation and emulation. In addition, we discuss the suitability of CDIF and present results for several implementations