Question 1

What do I need to send you?

Accepted Answer

Schematic/netlist, BOM, and firmware (ELF/bin or source + toolchain). Cadence, Altium, and KiCad exports work at launch. You write no models.

Question 2

What do I get back?

Accepted Answer

A working simulator of your board: board model, attached peripheral models, and a setup that runs your real firmware. Use it to debug, reproduce conditions, and run regressions in CI.

Question 3

Do I need to modify my firmware?

Accepted Answer

No. The production ELF runs against the simulated board. No mocks, no rewrite, no special build for HardLabs.

Question 4

Which MCUs are supported?

Accepted Answer

Common Arm Cortex-M families at launch, with the I²C, SPI, UART, GPIO, timer, and interrupt paths firmware leans on most. Coverage expands every release — ask us about your MCU.

Question 5

What happens when a peripheral isn't supported?

Accepted Answer

We tell you which BOM parts have models and which don't. Unsupported parts can be stubbed so the rest of the board still runs, or prioritized for a model during the pilot. Coverage is explicit — we don't pretend a missing model is accurate.

Question 6

How accurate are the models?

Accepted Answer

Behavioral models for analog blocks plus cycle-aware digital models for buses and MCUs. They're tuned to expose integration and timing bugs — not to replace final electrical validation on physical hardware.

Question 7

Can I run the simulator locally / in CI?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The loop runs headless, so you can gate every firmware commit on the same board-level checks you'd otherwise only run by hand at bring-up. Local and CI workflows are part of the pilot package.

Question 8

How is this different from SPICE?

Accepted Answer

SPICE simulates the circuit — it doesn't run your firmware. HardLabs executes your actual firmware image against a simulator of the board, so you test hardware and code together.

Question 9

How is this different from HIL?

Accepted Answer

A HIL rig needs physical hardware and bench instruments. HardLabs is software-only: same idea (real firmware + board behavior), available as soon as you have a netlist and firmware — without waiting for a prototype.

Question 10

Can we run this on-prem or air-gapped?

Accepted Answer

Yes — talk to us. Self-hosted and on-prem deployment is available for export-controlled and IP-sensitive teams. Your netlists and firmware stay yours; we don't train on customer designs.

Simulate whole PCBs with firmware-in-the-loop

Debug the whole system in software

Catch an I²C timing violation in software

From schematic to CI

Send us your design. We'll send you a simulator.

Questions engineers ask first.

Simulate whole PCBs with firmware-in-the-loop

Debug the whole system in software

Catch an I²C timing violation in software

From schematic to CI

Send us your design. We'll send you a simulator.

Questions engineers ask first.

What do I need to send you?−

What do I get back?+

Do I need to modify my firmware?+

Which MCUs are supported?+

What happens when a peripheral isn't supported?+

How accurate are the models?+