Hierarchical mechanisms for high-level modeling and simulation of digital systems

The main purpose of this paper is to present a useful set of hierarchical mechanisms of specification to model and simulate digital systems. The shobi-PN model (Synchronous, Hierarchical, Object-Oriented and Interpreted Petri Net), was developed to support the use of hierarchy to model both the control unit and the data path of the systems. Modeling of a pipelined architecture unit of a microprocessor is considered as a case study to illustrate the capabilities of the hierarchical mechanisms proposed.