Most engineers start their design with some development hardware and software. Design usually begins with a development system provided by microprocessor (MPU) or FPGA manufacturers. This works fine with a single processor, but when the design calls for multiple MPUs and/or FPGAs or other chips, the development prototype gets complicated real fast.
Development platforms are perpetually becoming bigger and more complex due to larger, more complex applications. Defense, aerospace, machine vision, cloud computing, and especially artificial intelligence (AI) are examples of applications that require considerable computing capability.