What is meant by the phrase “Software can replace hardware”?

Question

Studying beginners course on hardware/software interface and operating systems, often come up the topic of if it would be better to replace some hardware parts with software and vice-versa. I can't make the connection.

Answer 1

I think the fundamental connection that other answers are missing is this:

Given a general-purpose computer (e.g. a CPU), one can program it to perform pretty much any computation that we have defined. However, specialized hardware may perform better, or may not provide any value.

(this answer is focused on desktop processing and uses examples from that domain)

Replacing software with hardware

If you are old enough to remember PC gaming in the mid-to-late 1990s, you probably remember FPS games like Quake. It started out being "software rendered," meaning the CPU performed the calculations necessary to render the graphics. Meanwhile, the CPU also had to perform input processing, audio processing, AI processing, etc. It was very taxing on the CPU resources. In addition, graphics processing is not well-suited to a mainstream CPU (then or now). It tends to be a very highly parallel task, requiring many more cores than even a modern high-end CPU (8).

We moved graphics processing from software to hardware: enter the 3dfx Voodoo and Nvidia TNT (now GeForce). These were specialized graphics cards that offloaded processing from the CPU to the GPU. Not only did this spread the workload, providing more computing resources to do the same amount of work, the graphics cards were specialized hardware that could render 3D graphics much faster and with more features than the CPU could.

Fast forward to the modern era, and non-CPU graphics are required on the desktop. Even the operating system cannot function without a GPU. It is so important that CPUs actually integrate GPUs now.¹

Replacing hardware with software

Back when DVD was brand-new, you could install a DVD drive in your desktop computer. However, the CPUs of the day were not powerful enough to decode the DVD video and audio streams without stuttering. At first, a specialized PCI board was required to perform the decoding. This was specialized hardware that was build specifically to decode the DVD format and nothing else. Much like with 3D graphics, it not only provided more computing resources but was custom-built for the task, making DVD playback smooth.

As CPUs grew much more powerful, it became feasible to decode DVDs "in software," meaning "on a general-purpose computer." Even with a less-efficient processor, it had enough raw speed and pipeline optimizations to make DVD playback work to users' expectations.

We now have CPUs hundreds or even thousands of times as powerful² as we had when DVDs were introduced. When Blu-ray came along, we never needed specialized hardware, because general-purpose hardware was more than powerful enough to handle the task.

Doing both

Modern Intel CPUs have specialized instructions for H.264 encoding and decoding. This is part of a trend where general-purpose CPUs are gaining specialized functions, all in the same chip. We do not need a separate PCI Express board to decode H.264 efficiently as with DVDs early on, because CPUs contain similar circuitry.

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¹ GPU refers to a processor specifically designed to perform graphical computations. Older 2D graphics cards were not GPUs: they were simply framebuffers with DACs to talk to the monitor. The difference is GPUs contain specialized processors that excel at certain types of calculations, and as time went on, are now actually programmable themselves (shaders). Graphics hardware has always contained the specialized circuitry necessary to convert the data in a framebuffer into a format that can be output across a cable (VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort) and understood by a monitor. That is irrelevant to the discussion of offloading the computations to specialized hardware.

² DVD-Video was released in 1997, at a time when the Pentium 2 was also newly-released. This was a time when CPUs were rapidly increasing in power: one could consider a new P2 computer with a DVD decoder, or installing one in a slightly older P1. Compare that to a modern generation 6 Core i7 using Wikipedia's list of MIPS, and a modern CPU is anywhere between 590 and 1,690 times faster. This is due in part to clock speed, but also the move to multiple cores as being standard as well as modern CPUs doing a lot more work per core per clock tick. Also relevant is that as technology advances, Intel (who dominates the desktop and x86 server market) adds specialized instructions to help speed up operations that desktop users want to do (e.g. video decoding).

Answer 2

I am surprised nobody mentioned yet one of the most glaring examples: software-defined radio.

If you took a present-day smartphone back in time some 50 years and showed it to a competent engineer from the mid-1960s, he would be able to comprehend most of it. That a supercomputer can be reduced to something that fits in your pocket? Check. That you can have the equivalent of an ultra-high-quality color television in the package? Check. That it is that much faster, has that much more storage, etc., than computers of the era? Check. That software has been written that can perform such complex functions? Check.

But tell that competent engineer that oh, by the way, this package contains a set of extremely efficient transmitters and sensitive receivers: a digital spread spectrum transceiver that can simultaneously transmit and receive on multiple channels, communicating with an infrastructure tower that may be miles away; another digital transceiver that communicates high speed data with a base station somewhere in the building; yet another digital transceiver that communicates with low-power wearable devices; and another receiver that picks up a weak signal from a satellite in intermediate orbit... he would call you a liar.

He would call you a liar because he knows that receivers of such high sensitivity cannot be constructed without a multitude of tuned circuits, which filter out neighboring stations and select the signal of interest. And that such circuits require parts with sizes that are defined more by physics than technology, such as capacitors and inductors.

You would then have to explain that in a modern radio, most of that is done in software. That after the signal incoming from the antenna is converted to an intermediate frequency and amplified a little, it is then sampled by an analog-to-digital converter; and subsequent processing takes place in a digital signal processor. All that tuning, that filtering, which used to require tons of hardware in an old-school high-end radio can be described in the form of mathematical equations; and if that can be done, those equations can be executed in real-time by the DSP.

This, I think, is one of the most glaring examples of software replacing hardware. As a result, we carry smartphones in our pockets that, even to a competent 1960s engineer, would be akin to a magic trick.

Compared to this, the idea that the simple logic of a garage door opener, an electronic bathroom scale or a TV remote nowadays is implemented using a general-purpose microcontroller and software instead of custom hardware almost seems trivial (and it would certainly be a lot more comprehensible to our hypothetical 1960s engineer than software-defined radio.)

Answer 3

Consider this circuit:

It is a Flip Flop, aka a Bistable Multivibrator. It can be replaced with this code:

static bool toggle;

if (toggle == true) 
{
    lblTop.BackColor = Color.Black;
    lblBottom.back Color = Color.Red;
}
else
{
    lblTop.BackColor = Color.Red;
    lblBottom.BackColor = Color.Black;
}
toggle = !toggle;

Answer 4

It means exactly what it sounds like.

A particularly famous example is the Disk II Drive designed by Steve Wozniak for the Apple II:

The chief innovation was making the controller compact by using software while competitors relied on hardware. As Bill Fernandez, then an electronic technician at Apple, remembers it, "the key advantage of [Wozniak's] design [was] that it used only six chips instead of the usual 60 to 70

Another example you're probably more familiar with: Emulators. They replace entire sets of hardware (and software) entirely in software. CPUs, various control chips, even storage devices.

Now you can't eliminate all hardware, eventually you need something to run the software on. But in general, any logic task you can implement in hardware can also be implemented in software (performance may not be identical, it may be slower, faster, or either in different situations, depending on the underlying hardware and the implementation).

Answer 5

Another field in which this is true is synthesisers.

Early synthesizers were 100% analog hardware that generated waveforms directly then modified them via circuitry (filters, amplifiers, etc.). It was possible to digitally synthesize sound, but it required computing resources that the average person could not afford (an actual mainframe and custom digital-to-analog converter hardware).

As chip fabrication improved, synthesizers shifted from pure analog to synthesizer chips controlled by digital signals but still generating analog signals, and then to pure digital synthesis (sample playback, FM synthesis, true additive synthesis, and so on).

Today, processors as cheap enough and fast enough to allow programmers to create computer versions of classic analog synthesizers that exactly duplicate the behavior of the original circuits by simulating their behavior in realtime - in fact, phones and tablets are now capable of running fast enough to run these re-creations; the Korg iMS-20 is an example.

Both classic synthesizers and new ones are available as VST or AU plugins for digital audio programs such as Ableton Live, Logic, or Cubase, and these provide the access to synthesizers to people who wouldn't otherwise have space or money to be able to use them.

Edit: I should at this point also mention VCVRack, which simulates analog modular synthesis in realtime. Quite a step forward from multi-hour render times for a few seconds of music.

Answer 6

In former times, the cut was quite clear. Most things that needed speedy execution had to be implemented in hardware. Take for example a multivibrator which generates a frequency. Not too long ago you needed a couple of transistors, capacitors and eventually a quartz to generate a (fixed) frequency. Now there are cheap micro-controllers that cost only a few cents or so. Since they are so fast, you can use them easily to create a multivibrator. And moreover you easily can control via software what frequency to generate where in former times you needed to solder different hardware. Though, going over a certain (but now rather high) frequency you'd still need pure hardware. So you see, there is a line between both, but the part you can solve with software is growing (exponentially).

Edit Actually “Software can replace hardware” is not really correct. It's just the fact that hardware got so mighty that you can use it to run software which emulates hardware. So instead of a few simple but statically soldered transistors you use millions of transistors that understand software. So the term should be "Hardware can now understand software" instead.

Answer 7

A comparison between the arcade game Tank (circa 1976) and the home console game Combat (1977) yields a nice example of how software could replace hardware even 40 years ago.

The arcade game Tank (circa 1976) allowed two players to drive around tanks and shoot at each other. It did not include any sort of processor, but instead had hardware counters to keep track of the horizontal and vertical positions of the electron beam, tanks, and shots, as well as the player's scores, rotational angles, the elapsed time. It had hardwired logic to output the bitmap data associated with the scores, the players' tank shapes, and the background.

The Atari 2600 Video Computer System (a home game console circa 1977) included hardware to track the horizontal (but not vertical!) positions of two bitmap objects and four variable-width pulse generators, hold and clock out a 20-bit-wide low-resolution playfield graphics pattern as well as two high-resolution 8-bit patterns, latch colors for the players, background, and playfield, and detect collisions among the various objects. It also included a general-purpose programmable timer, but the hardware had little other than the above. Nonetheless, even though the hardware is much simpler than that of the game Tank, the 2K ROM cartridge Combat allows the 2600 to play the same basic game but with many other features (a variety of vehicles and backgrounds, bouncing shots, etc.) because it can replace most of the arcade machine's hardware with software. Interestingly, even though the Atari 2600 is probably the second-simplest hardware platform of any commercially-sold microprocessor-based home video game system, it is so well designed to facilitate replacing hardware with software that when programmed correctly it can run circles around many of its competitors.

Answer 8

The phrase "software can replace hardware" is a warning to not try and solve problems with hardware unless there are very clear advantages. Software is 10x-50x cheaper to develop and almost infinitely cheaper to produce per unit than hardware. Doing X in hardware will not be a winning solution unless X really can't be done efficiently in software.

Answer 9

The nuance has been well tackled, but I think it's possible the stumbling block for OP, is that's its very much not possible to replace hardware with software. The 'hardware' invariably involves significantly less 'hardware' than the 'software' solution.

The difference is that the logic of a process/algorithm/computation can be moved between hardware and software. Many examples have been given, so I won't elaborate.

Answer 10

In early computers with virtual memory, you had to make a task switch upon a TLB miss to load a new page entry. A piece of OS software would find the correct process, and walk through the page tables, finding the correct entry and writing it back to the TLB. Before switching back to the original process to continue.

Now most CPU's use hardware to do the process, reading page table, walking the page tables and updating the TLB.

Both methods need to use software to handle page-faults, but as TLB-misses handily outnumber page-faults the hardware walk still outperform software.

In generel if you have a simple procedure that you need to handle repeatedly you find a hardware replacement. If you have a complex hardware solution with a complicated control flow, you can simplify the hardware by using software.

Answer 11

There are many instances where software can replace hardware and vice versa.

A classic example of this is a math lookup table. Instead of calculating the results to common expressions each time, they are stored internally in your math co-processor, and simply referred to when needed.

Most are probably already familiar with audio filters, and software that can mimic real instruments and devices like pedals or amplifiers.

Any hardware that can be created virtually will be used, if it's faster and/or cheaper than the physical equivalent.

Answer 12

In accounting, a hard copy of an invoice (for instance) can now be sent electronically, and software is starting to handle the receipt of this kind of paperwork and its processing more and more. It is an excellent example of hardware being replaced by software.