Embedded systems are built by two kinds of engineers who rarely speak the same language. Software developers write the application. Hardware designers decide what runs on the processor, what moves to the FPGA, and how the pieces communicate. Traditionally, those decisions are locked in early, on paper, and only truly tested once real hardware exists, which is exactly when mistakes are most expensive to fix.

Researchers in the Microelectronics and Microsystems Group (GRM2) at Polytechnique Montréal set out to change that. Their idea was simple to state and hard to build: let designers start from the code they already have, create an executable model of the entire system, and try out different hardware/software partitions in simulation before committing to any of them.

That research became SpaceStudio. In 2008, Guy Bois founded Space Codesign Systems to take it out of the lab and put it in the hands of industry.