half of all chips require at least one revision to fix bugs before product release

It is reassuring to come across articles that reinforce your belief that your PhD research has merit.

Graham Hellestrand has written an article about How virtual prototypes aid SoC hardware design.

Having successfully modeled an Intel IXP1200 network processor using SheSim I can vouch for his opinion.

It is necessary to model before you create the silicon infrastructure, or else you are going to face a whole host of thorny system design issues.