A method and apparatus for performing distributed simulation is presented. According to an embodiment of the present invention, simulators are interfaced to a simulation backplane via simulator-dependent interfaces (SDI's). The simulators exchange messages via the simulation backplane and the SDI's. The SDI's convert the exchanged messages between a data format supported by the backplane and a data format supported by the simulator to which the interface is connected. By interfacing the simulators with the backplane via SDI's, the validation environment may be changed without reconfiguring the backplane.