Patent ID: 8082141

Claim:
A method for simulating behavior of first and second interrelated components within a system comprising: modeling behavior of said first and second components using first and second functional specifications, the first functional specification comprising an activity; creating an interface between the first and second functional specifications that comprises communications between the first and second functional specifications and a relationship between the communications, the communications comprising at least one child communication and at least one parent communication that comprises the at least one child communication; simulating behavior of said first and second components in predetermined circumstances at least by: generating a first time queue entry for the activity of the first functional specification; based on the activity, creating a second time queue entry for a first communication of the communications between the first and second functional specifications; creating at least one further time queue entry for a second communication in response to the generating of the second time queue entry, the at least one further time queue entry being selected based at least on the relationship between the communications of the interface; and creating a link associated with the at least one further time queue entry that identifies the first communication as a parent of the second communication, or a link associated with the at least one further time queue entry that identifies the first communication as a child of the second communication; wherein the first component is modeled at a higher level of abstraction than the second component, or the second component is modeled at a higher level of abstraction than the first component; and wherein the simulating includes encountering a first construct for the first functional specification that signals a first language simulator to simulate on the basis of a first programming language and encountering a second construct for the second functional specification that signals a different language simulator to simulate on the basis of a second programming language.