This paper presents principles and tools to facilitate multi-processor system on chips (MPSoCs) design and modeling, and to speed up cycle accurate SystemC simulation. We describe an effective way to build an hardware architecture virtual prototype, using a library of SystemC simulation models based on communicating synchronous finite state machines. This modeling approach supports a fully static scheduling strategy, based on the analysis of the combinational dependency graph. Our static scheduling algorithm has been implemented in the SystemCASS simulator, and provides speed-up of one order of magnitude versus the standard event-driven SystemC simulation engine. The modeling approach proposed in this paper has been adopted by the SoCLIB French National Project, that is an open modeling and simulation platform for multi-processors system on chips.