A Standardized Co-simulation Backbone Braulio Adriano de Mello l ,2 and Fhivio Rech Wagnerl IInstituto de Informatica - UFRGS - Porto Alegre - Brazil: 2 URI - Brazil Abstract: In the field of co-simulation, the construction of a bridge between different simulators and the solution of problems like synchronization and data translation are some of the main challenges, This paper discusses the advantages of the HLA (High Level Architecture) standard to solve these problems and presents a generic architecture to support environments for geographically distributed co-simulation, called Distributed Co-simulation Backbone (DCB), which is based on the HLA. This architecture is very flexible and does not enforce code modifications to the simulators to be integrated into the environment. Key words: distributed co-simulation, simulation backbone, cooperation, HLA 1. INTRODUCTION Co-simulation is used to make experiments and get information on the behavior of heterogeneous systems aiming at the validation of their design or at the evaluation of performance, Heterogeneous systems are characterized by a combination of hardware and software parts or by descriptions in different languages and/or at different abstraction levels [1]. In order to validate the design of embedded electronic systems, research in co-simulation mainly emphasizes the cooperative simulation of hardware and software parts, Therefore, one of the major challenges in co-simulation is the construction of a mechanism for a consistent cooperative simulation involving those parts, This challenge has been increased by the evolution of technologies for communication and distributed processing [2]. Current techniques, environments, and tools for co-simulation have shown that one of the main bottlenecks is the communication interface, The M. Robert et al. (eds.), SOC Design Methodologies © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2002