Simulation - better than the real thing?

Colin Walls, Mentor Embedded
Embedded.com (July 6, 2013)

With a complex embedded system, work needs to start on the software long before the hardware is available. Indeed, it may be necessary to begin even before the hardware design is finalized. Because software engineers need to test their code as they go along, they need an execution environment from day 1. Numerous options are reviewed in this article, with a particular focus on simulation technologies.

There has always been tension between hardware and software developers. In an embedded design, if something goes wrong both parties tend to assume that the other is at fault. Worse still, if a hardware design flaw is located late in the development process, it may be too late to fix it economically, so the only option is to address the problem in software. As a software engineer, my, does that rankle!

A result of this tension is an attitude among some embedded software developers that hardware is a necessary evil that exists solely to execute the software. So, any means to eliminated the hardware from the software development process is attractive, which leads to the conclusion that simulation is a Good Thing.

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