Architecture True Prototyping of Product Lines Using Personal Computer Networks

Abstract

A big problem in the consumer electronics industry of today is the growing gap between research and development. There is no lack of ideas for new products and new product features. On the contrary, Philips Research is generating and prototyping so many new ideas that product divisions are incapable of absorbing or even assessing a significant part of them. One of the major problems is ”architecture mismatch”. I.e., it is very hard to fit a feature – prototyped on a powerful computer – into an existing product line, because of incompatible interfaces and interactions between new features and existing ones. This paper proposes a prototyping approach that – although based on PCs and networking – strongly reduces the ”architecture mismatch” problem and creates ”product-line awareness” among researchers working on future Consumer Electronics applications. A PC based ”architecture prototyping” platform should be a prominent part of a product-line.