Crunch time for convention refocuses design tools

And to see the drivers of that change, you don’t have to look any further than today’s leading electronic products and where their competitive value lies.

Consider, for example, a portable product like a phone or music player. Along with the importance of the device’s physical properties – how it looks and feels – the defining competitive feature is invariably how it functions.

In the global market of low-cost manufacture and a variable regard for intellectual property, the only attribute that often separates products that look and cost the same is how they function.

It’s that functional element, or the built-in device intelligence, that defines a product’s competitive edge.

This, in turn, is largely defined by the ‘soft’ elements of those designs or, more specifically, in the software-defined elements that characterise the product’s function and user experience. Triggered by the development and widespread adoption of microprocessors, the trend towards software-centric (or ‘soft’) design has continued at a rapid pace to the point where a product’s physical hardware now takes a supportive back-seat role.

It now acts as a host and external interface for the ‘soft’ elements that define a product, rather than determining the unique aspects of that product in its own right.

So in product development terms, what’s changed is that while the development of a product’s physical hardware is still important, it has now become part of the design process that adds little sustainable differentiation to the final result.

Along with whole products that have virtually become ‘commodity’ items – DVD players for example – the actual hardware devices and blocks of circuitry within a design have become universal or commodity items in themselves.

These are available to everyone, are easy to copy and do not deliver any unique properties to the overall design. One LCD interface or ethernet block is pretty much like any other, so there’s little value in using precious product development time to design one from scratch.

Today, then, we should be focusing first and foremost on the soft ‘design intelligence’ that will deliver a sustainable competitive advantage to a product design. While physical hardware is essential, it’s of secondary importance and its definition will evolve as the design progresses.

Regardless of this wholesale shift in focus, in traditional design flows the initial part of the design cycle is directed towards creating the physical hardware platform to support the soft elements. Meaningful software development really can’t proceed until hardware – such as a prototype – is available, so a number of key device hardware decisions must be made before a suitable physical platform is designed and created.

This situation exists because conventional design tools and workflows, those based on a sequential approach to product design using a collection of separate applications, are largely incompatible with the new approach required for today’s designs.

By progressing in a linear way through the product development process where the results of one design task are handed over the fence to the next, conventional design flows force a hardware-first approach to design.

When that crucial software development eventually does take place, the required capabilities of the hardware platform will only then become clearer, yet its configuration has already been locked when the initial prototype was created.

The practical consequence of this conundrum is that multiple prototype hardware platforms must be created as the hardware specification is developed towards the product’s design goals. This not only slows the process, but in many cases the performance or functionality of that product must be compromised when a pending deadline forces the design team to use an immature hardware format.

The alternative is to keep developing the hardware – say, by changing the type of processor or whatever is needed to achieve the design goals – while delaying the product release as the design iterations continue.

While the basis for this design flow issue has existed since the adoption of microprocessors and embedded software, it has become increasingly incompatible with the shift to a soft-centric design approach. Today, however, the revolution of affordable high-capacity programmable devices such as FPGAs has accelerated the adoption of soft design by introducing software-defined embedded hardware.

Large sections of a design’s logic hardware are now typically contained in the soft realm, which has exacerbated the design barriers imposed by a hardware-first product development flow. Those barriers have now become roadblocks to successful product design.

The short of it is that the traditional product development approach is completely backwards for today’s needs.

This is particularly true of a design flow that uses the embedded design tools from the FPGA vendors, since the overall process is based on an even more complex collection of separate and isolated design tools.

Each completed task must be ported over to the next then reinterpreted in that domain and the choice of physical hardware devices – such as the FPGA – is limited by the partisan nature of the vendor tools.

Hardware design, which should come later in the design cycle, is constraining the development of the soft intelligence that defines a product’s unique competitive value in the market.

What’s needed to create the next generation of electronic products are tools that allow a design’s soft functionality to be defined and developed first, then implemented on a suitable hardware platform when its requirements are fully understood.

The hardware platform itself might be developed from scratch as a custom board design, or even be sourced as a COTS hardware platform.

Such a system would unlock software development from the design of the hardware platform it resides on, freeing designers to focus on developing innovative soft functionality unencumbered by hardware restraints.

The first prerequisite for this approach is a product development system that brings together the design domains into one unified application that uses a single design data model.

In this way, embedded software, programmable hardware and physical hardware use a common design interface and database across all domains, making product development one cohesive and connected task.

With a single design framework in place, the opportunity then exists to apply software layers that raise the level of design abstraction across the entire design process.

These layers provide the isolation necessary to create an FPGA development environment that is independent of the device vendor and target architecture, by making use of driver files and hardware libraries that match all supported devices.

The layer systems can combine with matching software compliers and libraries of pre-verified embedded IP to create an embedded development system that is ‘vendor neutral’ and intimately linked with the design capture and board development stages.

Such a system understands the intricacies of all design disciplines within the unified application, so the isolating layers that handle the underlying hardware complexity ‘disconnect’ the soft intelligence from the supporting physical hardware.

That crucial soft IP – composed of programmable hardware and embedded software – can be developed independently of the hardware platform, removing the traditional problems caused by having to create physical hardware first.

This also opens up the opportunity for concurrent hardware and software design where the two domains can work together within the one product design environment. True design cooperation can then exist between the domains, the task of moving design elements between software and hardware is far simpler, and innovative product design is not restricted by workflow and inter-domain barriers.

Such a system would also support a hardware development board featuring plug-in device boards that allow changes in programmable devices and peripherals. If this development hardware communicates directly with the design software, the entire vendor-neutral product development system can simply align itself to the current choice of programmable or peripheral device.

Because the low-level design considerations are now taken care of by the design system itself, the focus can be redirected towards developing a design’s core functional elements by using high-level capture interfaces.

In this case, the arcane nature of HDL entry can give way to simpler embedded design capture systems that raise the level of design abstraction.

These might take a graphical flow diagram approach, or even use a schematic capture system where functional blocks of IP can be moved around, then be interconnected in an easy and familiar way. The capture process is greatly simplified and embedded hardware development – once the exclusive domain of programmable hardware specialists – can now be tackled by hardware and software engineers using their existing skills.

With this approach, electronic product design can be undertaken as a single task, rather than as a collection of individual tasks that are brought together at the end of the development process.

Ultimately, the separation of design functionality from physical hardware creates a design environment where the hardware platform is not a prime consideration and can be dealt with later, when the product's form and function have been developed to a mature state.

That independent soft IP of the design – where its true value lies – can be deployed on different hardware platforms that might deliver benefits such as improved performance, a simpler implementation or even lower costs.

The method of deployment would also be dictated by commercial considerations such as planned production run lengths, time-to-market deadlines and profit margins. In the physical sense, however, the actual implementation might be in any number of forms, including a complete OTS hardware device, an assembled set of OTS hardware modules or a traditional custom-built PCB.

What’s even more compelling is the prospect of OTS hardware that is directly supported by both the design software and the hardware development platform you use to develop and test the product.

Design carried out in that environment can then directly and smoothly translate into the final product. With this approach, crucial design decisions can be made much later in the design cycle and the defining soft elements of the design can be updated at any time – even after the product has been deployed in the field.

If the system is also independent of device vendors, the door opens to a flexible, soft-centric design approach that allows designers to innovate without the barriers imposed by hardware constraints or the complexity and inefficiency of traditional design tools.

Along with redefining the design tools we use, we also need a matching change in our approach and design workflows. The corresponding change in thinking that’s needed is to turn traditional design inside out by focusing first and foremost on the soft design intelligence that defines a product.

It is the unique ‘soft’ functionality implemented in a design that delivers sustainable product differentiation, and not the nature of the physical hardware that it resides on.

Tomorrow’s electronics design tools and approach must involve high-level methods that unlock that functionality from the restrictions of a predefined hardware platform, allowing all designers to focus on creating the intelligent and connected products of tomorrow.

*Rob Evans studied electronic engineering at RMIT in Melbourne. He has over 20 years’ experience in the electronics design and publishing industry including several years as the technical editor for Electronics Australia. He currently holds the position of technical editor at www.altium.com.au.