© 1979 by British Computer Society
A simulation of a minicomputer controlled system and its use as a debugging tool
1 Department of Computer and Information Science, The Ohio State University, 2036 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, Ohio, USA, 2 Department of Information Science, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bankyo-ko, Tokyo, Japan
This paper establishes a general principle that all devices and computers embedded in a system should be considered equal from the viewpoint of the simulation design of a computer controlled system. This principle is a formal and general approach to simulation design especially for debugging aids and provides an excellent simulation technique offering generality, simplicity and flexibility. In addition a new, simple, and efficient time flow mechanism is presented. This mechanism can be widely applied to other kinds of programming whenever time management is necessary. For demonstrating and testing the new techniques, the simulation of a minicomputer system is implemented which is used for the purpose of developing and debugging real programs, especially those including input/output control instructions or sensitivity to input/output interrupt timing. This simulation technique can also be applied to a large computer system to debug programs or investigate its behaviour.
Received May 1975. revised September 1977.
* Present address: Department of Computer and Information Science, The Ohio State University, 2036 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA
Department of Information Science, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bankyo-ko, Tokyo.