Distributed web-based simulation for protecting intellectual property

This paper describes our work to develop the technology necessary for vendors to safely distribute and protect their Intellectual Property (IP) on the web. The basic strategy is to provide non-proprietary interface definitions on the web and to retain detailed product performance data behind protected firewalls. The public interface definitions enable interconnection with other regions of a virtual prototype and distributed analysis capabilities allow an evaluation of the fully operational virtual prototype. Thus distributed simulation across the web becomes feasible, and concerns about the security of proprietary data are addressed. IP is protected behind a firewall and distributed simulation is performed with the IP data wholly contained behind the firewall--only simulation interface data denoting changes to interface data values is exchanged over a potentially public network.