End-Product Utility Is the Goal
- Products sold on the basis of price & features
  - Feature-list wars
  - Fad technologies (e.g., fuzzy logic rice cookers)
  - Seldom which CPU is in the system
- Software is used to differentiate many products
  - I/O defines ability to interact with environment
  - Software defines functionality and quality of interaction
  - Hardware glues I/O to the software



Design Challenges:
  - Designing the CPU/digital hardware core should not be the
       first step in the design methodology...