If people queuing upto produce standards is any indication, system-level design has finally penetrated mainstream chip development. It is more than ten years since engineers at UK mainframe maker ICL tried to popularized the idea of modeling hardware at the level of abstractions rather than logic levels. Now the technique is being embraced around the world with a number of companies trying to kick-start standardization efforts around system level modeling. Modeling hardware using virtual platforms is becoming mainstream - so now attention is turning to the speed of simulation.