A rapid modeling tool for virtual prototypes

ModelMaker is a tool being developed to help modelers rapidly develop behavioral models from natural language descriptions to support the construction of virtual prototypes. This tool analyzes documents for behavioral patterns and constructs a component and signal index for search and retrieval of relevant text. The tool's interface features an edit window for HDL model development and a source window in which retrieved text and behaviors are displayed. Relevant source text can be retrieved by searches on entity and signal identifiers or on noun phrases automatically extracted from the source document. In addition the document can be automatically analyzed for behaviors which identify processes and events, as well as the devices and values which participate in them and, in some cases, how they interact. A natural agent/transaction modeling style is suggested for exploiting the extracted information.