Hardware is catching up to software. hw.dev tracks where that is happening, where it is still broken, and what builders should do about it.
Hardware isn't slow because of physics. It's slow because of coordination, validation, and tooling.
Those constraints are starting to break.
The bottleneck is shifting to decision-making. The teams that win will be the ones that compress the loop:
Short posts on meaningful developments. What happened, why it matters, what it enables, operator read.
Researchers retrained a model on synthesis and timing results while it worked on one chip block, and it found designs with up to 52.8% better area times delay.
Koppar AI's benchmark gives every PCB autorouter the same eight real boards and lets KiCad, not the router, decide whether the result is finished.
Each problem found on a real board becomes a versioned check in Boardwise's AI design review, with its own regression test so it can't quietly come back.
KDock's first test build lets an AI agent flash firmware, read the serial port, and query a scope itself, so it can check its own work on real hardware.
Long-form essays on the shifts reshaping hardware development. What is changing, why now, who benefits, what builders should do.
Siemens, Synopsys, RISC-V, and Pasqal all let an AI agent do the work while a separate, trusted tool decides whether it counts. That tool is where the lasting value is.
Arm, Rapidus, SEMIFIVE, and AMD are converging on the same model: sell an integration contract, not a component.
Opinionated, living reference maps of the modern hardware development stack. Layers. Incumbents. Insurgents. Named gaps.
First cut at the layered map of modern hardware development (from design through manufacture) with named incumbents, insurgents, and gaps. Updated as the ground moves.
The end-to-end stack a modern hardware team actually runs on: design, simulation, test, CI, manufacturing. Layered, opinionated, with named gaps.
Where AI is actually compressing hardware cycle time today, layer by layer: RTL, place-and-route, DV, PCB, DFM, test authoring, supply.
The stack that lets every test run in CI, not a lab bench: unit, integration, HIL, on-target, and compliance. Where the gaps are.
What validation looks like when specs, tests, coverage, and sign-off artifacts all live in Git. The tools, the formats, the missing layer.
The workflow from idea to shipped unit (requirements, CAD, BOM, MFG, field) and which layers have been code-ified vs which are still PDFs in SharePoint.
hw.dev is operator-led. Software-first view of hardware. Everything-as-code. Shift-left testing. Product realization.
Not a news site. Not an aggregator. An intelligence layer: Signal to read the week, Analysis to read the shift, Stack Maps to read the space.
Future tools may include BOM Intelligence, Test Intelligence, Validation Intelligence, Supply Chain Intelligence, and Product Realization Intelligence. Intelligence is the identity; the tools are the follow-through.