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In ProtoCollum™ the architecture of a communication protocol is modeled by creating a system of objects.
The purpose for creating a protocol model is to put the model into simulation so its behavior can be observed.
The uses of a finished model range across all phases of the design process:
- excercising of the model by the protocol designers to observe whether it behaves as expected,
- using it as an executeable specification to facilitate implementation by hardware designers,
- giving it as a reference model to hardware validation engineers.
To facilitate the creation of the object-based model, the ProtoCollum tool provides a graphical editing system
where the work of creating objects and setting the relationships is done with intuitive point and click operations.
The overall format of the graphical editor is similar to a MSC (Message Sequence Chart) in that
messages represented by horizontal lines are shown passing between agents represented
by vertical lines.
Once a portion of the protocol architecture is described on an Edit sheet, an engineer can
create any number of Test sheets to explore various conditions that may arise during operation
of the protocol. How will the protocol handle the disapperance of a message; what if a delay
causes two message to be received in an unexpected order; how will the system respond to
a repeated message; etc.
This system allows a protocol designer to create a correct complex design through an iterative
process that starts with a simple architecture specification, tests that the design is correct, and then
comes around again to add more functionality to the architecture.
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