The real vision here is that every product requires a solution based on both software and hardware. By being able to vary the hardware and software, you can make a more efficient solution. We also find this approach is much less work. If you select a hardware platform and just write software you end up writing a lot of code just to get 'round the deficiencies of the hardware. As he says this, it is clear Clucas is thinking back to his days as a games programmer struggling with Zilog Z80 and Motorola 68k processors.
Less hardware means less software and less power consumption.
Clucas cites the trend toward combining DSP and CPU cores on a single chip as present-day examples. What companies are doing now is pulling two cores together and calling it integrated. Some firms do provide integrated support but that's all. Clucas contends that such dual cores spend a lot of time and computation cycles communicating with each other for the sake of the architecture rather than to the benefit of the end application. He makes it clear that his ideal is one in which the system requirements drive both the hardware and software parts of the solution.