Animation prototyping in real-time systems: application to system specification, formal methods and concurrent system design

Animation prototyping offers a sound and effective way to help developers produce quality software-based systems-without being unduly prescriptive, restrictive or tool-dependent. Animation is now accepted as a valid and useful technique in the development of real-time systems. Two factors have been responsible for a much wider use of such methods: (a) the increased power and reducing cost of modern PCs and workstations; and (b) the availability of relatively low-cost sophisticated graphics packages. But be careful in the choice of tool: to get real benefits from animation prototyping, a comprehensive development environment is needed. Ideally, we require graphics, simulation and hardware/software co-design tools (e.g. CASE and VHDL facilities) which operate in an integrated fashion