The Hardware Revolution

By Alex Peron, Head of Marketing and Communications at Upverter


We are at the very beginning of an amazing change in the way we build, buy, consume, and experience devices. It's been called a whole bunch of different names over the past decade, but now that things are (finally) heating up the name that feels like it's going to stick is "hardware revolution".

I want to dive into how this all came to pass. Where we are in the resurgence of hardware. What the triggers were and what needs to continue to happen. What actually happened?

What changed?

"The evolution in hardware development in some ways parallels what the software industry saw ten years ago."
- Matt Witheiler

I believe the biggest change has to do with the way hardware comes to life. And to echo Matt, I think what is happening in hardware right now is a bit like what happened to software a decade ago.

The hardware design process used to look like this:

And if you know anything about the "lean startup" principles, or Agile software development, you're going to see a couple of very big problems with this. Personally I see a few really big ones, first the time between idea and customer. Second the time and cost between iterations. Third the upfront capital outlay for manufacturing and prototyping. And lastly the supply chain and manufacturing pressures at the end of the product cycle and their effect on growth and distribution. Long story short these things made hardware harder to do.

And this is what it looks like in indie shops and startups post-revolution:

The three really obvious differences are: the move away from old school specifications, the decoupling of final manufacturing from prototype manufacturing, and the reversal of sales and manufacturing. All three of these share some DNA with the developments happening in other industries following trends like collaboration and the move to the cloud. They also share a lot of software development and lean startup principles.

For starters, the early development stages of a hardware product historically were very waterfall-style, specification driven, design-by-committee projects. The innovation here was the introduction of both Open-Source, allowing the reuse of existing trusted hardware IP, and the introduction of Development and Breakout Boards, allowing much faster iteration in the earliest ideation stages of the project.

Following the development of a specification, hardware companies would then begin negotiating supply relationships in parallel with the design of their product. These relationships were necessary, as small and prototype-focused manufacturers didn't yet exist and the hardware companies would have to fight for time on a manufacturing line or suffer ridiculously high prototyping costs. In the last few years the introduction of specialized prototyping equipment combined with the emergence of small-lot-size, prototype-focused manufacturers has led hardware revolution companies to decouple final manufacturing from rapid prototyping, allowing them to move substantially faster through the design phase.

Finally, the reversal of mass-manufacturing and sales, through pre-sales and crowdfunding, have allowed hardware revolution companies to both fund the manufacturing of - as well as market test - their product before building and inventorying thousands of units.

Continue reading this article on Upverter’s blog.

Upverter is the best place to share hardware design with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. The schematics and PCB layout editor runs natively in a browser. We added collaboration to hardware design. Think about Google Docs. Upverter syncs the changes on your design as they happen and enables you jump to any point in time. Upverter is the perfect tool to design better hardware, faster.