VisualSim is a graphical tool that can be used for performance trade-off analyses using such metrics as bandwidth utilization, application response time, and buffer requirements.

To select the best interface to meet the deterministic timing and maximum power consumption, architects build models of 10 different protocols including PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, and RapidIO to compare the behavior for the same workload.

[4] The American University of Sharjah used performance evaluation methodologies to leverage exploration at the architectural level and assist in making early design tradeoffs.

Research and development on improving system architectures has been performed in networking, avionics, industrial, semiconductors, and high-performance computing fields.

[6] FPGA designers can perform high-speed virtual simulation of large electronic systems using VisualSim.As part of the Xilinx ESL initiative, the company has added support for on-FPGA CPUs.

At the architectural level, the hardware and software models have cycle-accurate blocks of processors, memory subsystems, bus protocols, and trace files.

This solution augments tools such as MatLab/Simulink and UML/SysML by providing very early visibility into the full system operation without getting into the details of the algorithm and code-level implementation.

Typical example use cases would be Multimedia SoC with Network-On-Chip,[10] In-Car networks using Ethernet, CAN, LIN and FlexRay, Submarine Inertial systems, etc.

The design can be refined by adding specific hardware implementation details, logic, and cycle-level timing to the VisualSim model.

Memory technologies: SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, LPDDR3, LPDDR4, Flash, RAMBUS Processor Kit: ARM Cortex (A, R, M) series, PowerPC, Intel, TI, AMD, Marvel Bus/Interfaces: AMBA AHB, APB, AXI, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe, RapidIO, SPI, NVMe, CoreConnect, FSB, BSB