Towards systems integration in a virtual environment: small steps, big results, and complications to come for embedded systems engineering in the next millennium

Engineers are constantly coping with new technologies, evolving design processes, and tools to facilitate high complexity product development. One recent example is found in hardware/software co-development tools, which encourage early integration and fast execution of target application code on simulated hardware. This technology has enabled small steps towards system-level virtual prototyping. Current methods and recent results obtained in real design processes have indicated that there are huge advantages in the approach, but methodology and process changes often challenge the engineering organization