Irish Silicon

I am currently attending ISSC 2004 where I was presenting some research in the area of system design.
Again the main attraction for me this year is the chance to discuss concepts with my peers across a variety of colleges.
The two most common question I encountered today regarding my work of modelling the IXP1200 using OO techniques, where.
1. Why do you want to create a s/w model of a silicon design?
2. What is UML ?
I found that my sequence diagrams and class diagrams really brought home the idea of why OO techniques are so powerful.
The questions I recieved certainly helped to focus my thoughts as to what should be done next.
Queens University should be congratulated for the excellent conference that they are hosting.