The system designer uses Hyperstone's development board.

The development board is being connected either with the hyICE serial link or etherICE serial/ethernet link.
Using the four I/O expansion connectors on the board, the customer can connect his own dedicated application to the Hyperstone world. This may be, for example, a hardware implemented on a breadboard for LCD control, robot control, frame grabber, or something else.

This additional board is plugged directly onto the I/O expansion connectors on the Hyperstone development board (Prototype phase). Now, the most “difficult” part of the application is already solved: the Hyperstone environment, because it is already existing as the development board. The only novel part is the customer's own daughter board which he designed to plug to the I/O expansion connectors. Using this experimental set-up consisting of Hyperstone's development board and the user's own hardware sitting on the connectors, he can start software development. The whole system is connected to the PC where all software is being developed, compiled and downloaded to the target system. Additionally, the PC is used for displaying debugging information.

In the next step, customer's own design, the customer's add-on board is combined with those parts of the Hyperstone development board which are necessary for the final target application. This gives a new board which is exactly tailored to the customer's application. Hyperstone recommends to add a small connector to this board for connecting hyICE in order to perform fine tuning. For such purposes, exactly the same Hyperstone software tools are used as in the prototype phase.

The last step is production. Here, the connector line for hyICE can be omitted or still be used for final tests using hyICE in combination with a needle tester.