Gone are the days when software developers would wait for the latest release of a chip or board and then determine how to use it; today software frequently drives hardware choices. 

This has led to several challenges for companies building smarter products including:

• Poor collaboration among hardware and software development teams (different tools, terminology)
• Significant challenges integrating software and hardware, leading to late product launches
• Increasing amount of software
• Need to meet regulatory compliance

Today, it is critical for companies to adopt an integrated, common tool chain to efficiently develop hardware and software, reduce risk, improve quality, and deliver the innovation required of the next generation of electronics products.

The need to meet regulatory compliance is extremely important for electronics companies today. However there are some major differences between hardware and software co-design process in heavily and lightly regulated industries.

Heavily regulated industries like automotive, aerospace and defense, and medical devices face issues like requirements management and traceability across the lifecycle to meet regulatory needs. While for lightly regulated industries like telecom and consumer electronics key issues are being able to reuse components from product to product as development time frames get shorter. These industries have to address these pain points through their entire supply chain in developing both hardware and software.

You can listen to the Podcast to learn how to co-develop smarter products more efficiently, at a higher quality and lower cost. You can also read the white paper “Accelerate Innovation through codevelopment of hardware and software” a very good source for more information.