A method for implementing a distributed hardware system includes retrieving a hardware design described in a hardware description language, where the hardware design includes a plurality of modules. The method includes sending modules of the design to software engines, where the runtime software maintains for each module being simulated an update queue and evaluate queue. The update queue contains events that update stateful objects in the module and cause evaluation events to be enqueued onto the evaluate queue, while the evaluate queue contains evaluate events that update stateless objects and cause update events to be enqueued onto the update queue. Having a update and evaluate queues for each module permits the runtime to manage module simulations so that the executions of each module run concurrently with each other.