VHDL for performance modeling of HLA-compliant simulations

This paper describes and critiques an effort which uses VHDL for the system level performance modeling of a multicomputer system, a HLA-compliant federation. An object-oriented-like object model is developed for the federation and it is implemented in VHDL. The baseline federation model uses a centralized RTI. The federation and the three submodels of the federation are implemented as entities and component objects of the entities are implemented as record types. The use of record types precludes the use of compiled VHDL, which slows the simulation considerably.