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Hardware is expensive. Coding is expensive. Changes are expensive. Implementing software rapid prototyping for Electronic Control Unit (ECU) development can avoid these expenses and resulting delays by enabling changes to existing code to allow easy calibration, experimentation or testing before committing to production software. Software-centric prototyping has been around for many years. In the past, experts used a technique called ‘code patching’ to do what is now called rapid prototyping. Using this method, these coders were able to change existing programs. Even in early vehicle control systems, there were a few people with the expertise to manually view and study code to enable a change in existing code. ATI took the idea of manually trying to change a program a step further. ATI invented a method of patching in new code on the ECU without the need for the original source code, any knowledge of assembler or hex code, or predefined hooks.