Hardware engineers always have looked at software tools and methodologies with a certain degree of envy. While the hardware side has embraced the discipline necessary to get products right prior to release, in large part because it’s too expensive to fix an error in hardware, the tools and languages are generally clunkier and the methodologies are much more rigid. Like software, they have to include complex dependencies, but unlike software they also must work with a set of design rules provided by foundries to ensure they can be manufactured with sufficient yield.
There has been much talk over the years about the need for new approaches, such as applying Agile techniques, as well as new languages in hardware to simplify hardware development. But so far those improvements have been limited. It’s difficult to incorporate these ideas into well-understood design flows, and it’s hard to get an entire industry to experiment with new ways of doing things.
Enter Sigasi, a Belgian hardware-software co-design company that leverages some of the concepts used in software to improve hardware code.