Virtutyping makes developing hardware faster and easier
At Sahara Cloud, we believe that Virtutyping is the future of hardware development.
What is Virtutyping? It’s a shortened term for “virtual prototyping”, a process of physically prototyping a digital product through virtual means.
Virtutypes have most of the important benefits of physical prototypes, but without many of the downsides. Virtual prototyping eliminates a lot of friction that comes with the physical nature of hardware development:
✓ No need for a physical lab setup
✓ Replication debugging conditions on hardware (hermetic)
✓ Collaboration on a shared system as it evolves
✓ Zero component lead-time
With remote working becoming the future of work and the ever increasing need for collaboration, virtutyping will be an essential step in hardware development.
Digital Twinning maintains testing condition for prototypes
A technology that virtutyping utilizes is the concept of “digital twinning” – mapping of a physical asset to a digital platform. Digital twinning is the solution to problems inherent to digital product development persist beyond just the initial R&D.
Even after a product has been launched into the market, product improvements and iterations take time. Many times, new problems with the product emerge that only become obvious when deployed in large scale environments. These problems can be hard to replicate and solve in reality because the exact failure conditions cannot be easily replicated.
Digital twinning provides a way for developers to improve and manage prototypes throughout the life cycle of a product, not just at its conception.
Now that you understand the concept of virtutyping and digital twinning, let’s talk about the technical benefits of using a virtutype platform:
- Inject test conditions into the digital twin replicates the exact conditions. A wide array of data such as weather conditions, location history, communication delays, and more can be used as information.
- All testing is hermetic. This gives developers both enormous scale and high granularity. This ensures repeatability and speeds up development.
- Continuous integration/continuous delivery based on real world pin inputs/outputs and data allows for safer upgrades and more insight into past bugs. Regression testing happens at every step.
How does Sahara Cloud address the need for Virtutyping?
The Sahara platform allows users to develop code on hardware via a web browser without the need for downloading any software or purchasing any electronic circuits.
Developers using the Sahara platform can remotely connect to circuit boards, chips, and test equipment in the cloud – this allows them to build electronic circuits in a distributed manner and with less risk, bypassing the limitations of traditional product development.
The end result is that developers can code and test on remote electronics as if they were physically present, making hardware development more accessible and cost-effective.
At Sahara Cloud, we believe that hardware development doesn’t have to be hard.