The market for embedded systems is expanding rapidly on a global scale. According to Market Research Future analysts, it will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 6% from 2023 to 2030, reaching USD 291 billion. Within that, some industries are growing more quickly than others, such as consumer electronics, industrial automation, and the automotive sector. More than just more chips or code is a major factor in this growth. It’s the closer integration of the two.
Co-design of hardware and software can help with that. Although the concept is not new, in reality it is now impossible to avoid. The explanation is straightforward: budgets and power envelopes are remaining unchanged while performance requirements are increasing. Teams can no longer afford to let software and hardware develop on different schedules and hope that they will coincide, making hardware-software co-design a critical product engineering service today.
What Hardware-Software Co-Design Really Means
The majority of people still consider software and hardware to be two different domains. Hardware engineers design the board, select the processor, configure the peripherals, and set the memory. The software team writes code for it months later. You can either spin the hardware again or apply a software patch if something isn’t aligning. They’re both pricey.
Co-design reverses that. It views software and hardware as two sides of the same equation rather than as sequential steps. The algorithms you can run depend on the processor you select. How much of that processor’s power you actually get depends on the driver you write. The user experience is determined by how memory and computation are balanced.
Asking questions in terms of use cases rather than parts lists is the crucial change. Rather than “What’s the fastest SoC we can buy?” “What’s the best combination of hardware features and software optimizations that allows us to run real-time object detection while hitting a 2W power budget?” you ask.
Co-design is effective because of this shift in perspective.
Why This Is More Than Theory
Let’s ground this in practical applications if it seems abstract.
Consider smart cameras that are embedded. According to market reports, this segment alone is expected to grow at a nearly 10% CAGR to reach USD 16.56 billion by 2032 (Zion Market Research). These devices, which are frequently at the edge with limited power, must perform AI-based motion analysis, facial recognition, and real-time video streaming. Without co-design, you either deliver software that operates too slowly or you over specify hardware to brute-force performance.
Let’s now examine automotive ECUs. Millisecond-level responsiveness is necessary for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Neither hardware nor later software optimizations can ensure that. It is made possible by the collaborative design of real-time operating systems, compute pipelines, sensor interfaces, and fail-safe mechanisms.
Or consider wearables for the Internet of Things. The limitation is battery life. Even if a hardware engineer optimizes the PMIC and uses a low-power SoC, the product will still drain too quickly if the software developer fails to appropriately manage sleep states and radio duty cycles. Co-design is the only way to balance those trade-offs.
The key is that you already engage in co-design on a daily basis. Teams collaborated to design the hardware and software, which is why your smartwatch lasts all day, your car’s ADAS doesn’t lag, or your video doorbell streams crystal-clear without draining its battery.
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Practical Benefits
Co-design has practical advantages. They appear in actual metrics that are important to product leaders.
Efficiency of Performance
You can get more performance out of the same silicon by using co-design. Instead of using hardware to solve an issue, you should intelligently schedule tasks, match workloads with accelerators, and remove firmware and driver bottlenecks.
Cutting Expenses
In order to protect against software inefficiencies, hardware is frequently over specified. The need for that safety margin is reduced through co-design. Instead of using flagship chips, you can use mid-tier ones to meet your performance goals. That directly affects BOM expenses.
Quicker Time to Market
Mismatches in the late stages are cruel. You could lose months if you discover after tape-out that your camera ISP is incompatible with the pipeline you have selected. Co-design assists in identifying these discrepancies early on, when correction is less expensive.
New Elements at the Periphery
Co-design is required for some features. Secure boot with hardware roots of trust, custom AI pipelines on NPUs, and ultra-low latency video streaming are not add-ons. They necessitate early hardware and software coordination.
Why Teams Struggle With Co-Design
Why doesn’t everyone use it if it’s so beneficial?
Skill divisions are a major contributing factor. Software developers and hardware engineers frequently inhabit distinct ecosystems. They attend different conferences, use different tools, and occasionally even speak different languages.
Additionally, there is organizational inertia. Waterfall project management is still used by many businesses. Software must start after the hardware has been frozen. Iterative back-and-forth is discouraged by that structure.
Then there is short-term thinking. At first, co-design appears to be slower. More discussions, more prototypes, and collaborative reviews are needed. In actuality, though, those extra days end up saving months. Not all management teams experience that benefit right away.
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How to Make Co-Design Work in Practice
Let’s discuss doable actions.
1. From the first day, cross-functional teams
Don’t decide on hardware before software has a chance to influence it. Include both viewpoints in preliminary feasibility studies. If your workload involves AI inference, let the software team validate that the chosen SoC can handle the model within the given power and thermal envelope, which is a key part of an effective product engineering service.
2. Make Use of Co-Simulation Resources
Workloads across hardware and software can be modeled with the help of contemporary EDA tools and embedded prototyping environments. Although they aren’t flawless, they are still far superior to guesswork. Early simulations can identify discrepancies in peripheral handling, bandwidth, or cache behavior.
3. Use cases, not specifications, should guide design.
Specs are not a good place to start. Saying “We need a quad-core CPU” is not appropriate. Say, “We require video analytics at 60 frames per second at less than 2W.” The specifications then originate from the actual workload rather than pointless checkboxes.
4. A prototype iteratively
Do not wait for the final silicon to be tested. To verify assumptions, use emulators, FPGA-based prototypes, or even partially functional firmware. The greatest benefits of co-design are seen in early feedback loops.
5. Develop Engineers Who Are Hybrid
People who can bridge both worlds are found in the most successful co-design teams. They’re not experts at everything, but they understand enough about both hardware and software to see trade-offs clearly. Co-design is frequently held together by these “hybrid” engineers.
A Closer Look: Video Processing Device Example
Let’s examine a case to give this some concreteness.
Consider yourself in charge of creating an intelligent security camera. The prerequisites:
- Play 1080p video
- Execute motion detection using AI
- Keep latency below 200 ms.
- Utilize a 3W power budget.
The pipeline might function, but not at the necessary latency, if the hardware team chooses a generic quad-core SoC and leaves the rest to software. The device overheats if the software team codes everything for the CPU.
With co-design, you can see that the SoC has a neural processing unit (NPU) and a dedicated video codec. The system can meet the latency requirement and remain within 3W by offloading inference to the NPU and encoding to the codec. This enables you to achieve performance objectives while using a smaller, less expensive chip.
In practice, that is the co-design difference.
Where This Trend Is Heading
Co-design will only become more popular. Why?
- AI everywhere: Although models are growing in size, local execution is anticipated on devices. The only way to make that feasible is through co-design.
- Energy constraints: Power budgets are set for wearables and EVs. Balance between hardware and software leads to efficiency.
- Security requirements: Joint silicon and firmware design is necessary for trusted execution, secure boot, and encryption.
- Customization: Off-the-shelf components don’t always satisfy specific requirements. Teams can refine for specialized use cases through co-design.
In actuality, this means that the days of designing with software or hardware in isolation are coming to an end. Teams that make co-design the norm rather than the exception will emerge victorious.
Conclusion
Co-designing hardware and software is more than just a technical detail. It is increasingly serving as the cornerstone of contemporary product engineering. It is impossible to treat hardware and software as distinct silos due to the complexity of new applications, such as autonomous systems and AI cameras.
Businesses that use co-design will ship more quickly, cut expenses, and produce devices that live up to expectations. Those who don’t will continue to experience budgetary spirals, delays, and mismatches.
We at Silicon Signals assist businesses in navigating this exact area. Our teams are passionate about co-design, whether it’s creating software stacks that maximize the use of silicon, designing AI-enabled cameras, or introducing new boards with optimized BSPs.
Let’s talk if you’re developing a product that must strike a balance between cost, power, and performance. Because the most intelligent products in this sector aren’t made with software or hardware in mind. Together, they are constructed.