The Role of Chip Pivoting in Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience

­Events like chip shortages, climate-based disruptions, geopolitical shifts, and supply bottlenecks have revealed a harsh truth: Traditional, rigid models of supply chain management can no longer keep up. To stay competitive, companies must adapt to these challenges quickly. This has brought concepts like modular design and chip pivoting to the forefront as essential strategies for mitigating risks and maintaining continuity when the unexpected strikes.

What is chip pivoting?

A core aspect of supply chain resilience is the ability to quickly switch between different components without overhauling an entire system. This is where chip pivoting comes into play. Chip pivoting refers to the process of substituting one microcontroller or microprocessor with another that offers similar functionality, often in response to a shortage or supply chain disruption.

Instead of redesigning an entire product, companies can use chip pivoting to make smaller, more manageable changes that enable them to continue production without significant delays.

That said, chip-pivoting is rarely straightforward. Differences in instruction sets, pinouts, peripheral support, and even power profiles can complicate the transition between chips.  However, by designing systems with modularity in mind, companies can more easily accommodate these shifts in components without the need for a full redesign of the hardware or firmware. This flexibility can mean the difference between maintaining production and facing costly downtime.

Efficient hardware modularity

One of the primary advantages of a modular design approach is that it isolates hardware components into discrete, interchangeable modules. For example, in a traditional product design, all components are integrated into a single printed circuit board (PCB). This means that if one component fails or becomes unavailable, the entire PCB might need to be redesigned, which can be costly and time-consuming.

In contrast, a modular approach integrates critical components, such as microcontrollers, memory, and power management units into smaller, separate System-on-Modules (SOMs) or uSOMs. These modules can be replaced or swapped out as needed, reducing the complexity of the redesign process. When a microcontroller becomes unavailable, the change can be made at the module level, leaving the rest of the system intact. This reduces both the time and costs associated with switching to a different chip, while also allowing for faster adaptation to supply chain disruptions.

Beyond risk mitigation, another benefit of modular hardware is increased reuse across product lines. A common carrier board can serve multiple configurations, with only the SOM changing depending on market needs, available chips, or performance targets. This reduces inventory complexity and improves time to market across all variants.

Modular firmware design for flexibility

Just as modular hardware enables easier component replacement, modular firmware is equally essential for chip pivoting. Firmware is often tightly coupled to the hardware it runs on, meaning that changes to the underlying components can require significant rewrites of the firmware.

The process of modifying firmware can be just as time-consuming as redesigning hardware. Microcontrollers and their associated peripherals require software components that must work in alignment with both the hardware and the firmware application.

A common challenge occurs when a chip vendor’s software-development kit (SDK) is tightly integrated with a specific microcontroller. In such cases, the SDK often provides all the necessary functionality for the initial chip, but it may not be compatible with other microcontrollers. This can lead to the need for a complete firmware redesign when switching to a new chip.

To mitigate this risk, the software strategy can mirror the approach used for hardware: adopting a modular design that builds on hardware-independent software components. This modular firmware approach introduces a hardware abstraction layer (HAL), which ensures that the firmware remains largely unaffected during chip-pivoting (Fig. 1).

If the new chip belongs to the same architecture, such as the Arm Cortex-M4, for example, the compiler typically remains unchanged. However, the interface layer and the specific drivers tied to the microcontroller’s peripherals will need to be adjusted. This means the chip pivot requires new drivers or a modified board-support package, but the rest of the firmware can remain intact. As a result, the application itself remains unaffected, and only the necessary drivers are updated to suit the new hardware.

In practice, the implementation of a modular firmware approach using a HAL can significantly simplify the chip-pivoting process. In Fig. 2, we see how SEGGER’s libraries and their real-time operating system (RTOS) facilitate this modularity, where only the drivers need to be modified when changing hardware — reducing both time and cost during the chip pivot.

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Figure 2: Modular firmware design implemented using SEGGER’s emPower OS.

The role of emPower OS

One tool created specifically around these principles is SEGGER’s emPower OS. It includes a modular RTOS environment that decouples hardware dependencies through clean interfaces and an internal HAL. With support for a broad range of architectures and chips, it allows firmware to remain largely unchanged when hardware changes.

Developers using emPower OS can integrate a new microcontroller by selecting or updating a driver package, while the existing application code, middleware, and RTOS configuration remain intact. This greatly reduces engineering effort, regression risk, and time to production when performing a chip pivot.

Because emPower OS is designed to be consistent across devices, it also simplifies development workflows and testing processes. This consistency matters in environments where products must comply with rigorous industry standards, and where change control processes are tightly managed.

Scalability and adaptability in modern systems

One of the key benefits of modular systems is their scalability. A modular hardware and firmware approach can easily accommodate changes in the underlying system as technology evolves. For example, as new microcontrollers are introduced, they can be integrated into existing products without requiring significant rewrites of the firmware or requalification of the hardware. This is particularly important in industries where product lifecycles are long, and maintaining compatibility with older designs is crucial.

Moreover, modular designs can be optimized for different performance requirements. A product initially designed for low-power microcontrollers can later be adapted to use more powerful processors without requiring a full redesign. This adaptability ensures that products remain viable over time, even as technology progresses and market demands shift.

Teams can also use modularity to create tiered offerings — low-end, mid-range, and premium — by changing only core processing or peripheral modules, all within the same system design.

Preserving operational continuity

In situations where a company faces a critical supply-chain disruption, the ability to quickly pivot to an alternative component can preserve operational continuity. Consider a scenario where a supplier of a specific microcontroller is unable to meet demand due to a natural disaster or geopolitical factors. A modular system that allows for easy chip pivoting can prevent the need to halt production entirely.

Without a modular design, the company would likely face significant delays while redesigning the hardware, rewriting firmware, and going through the qualification process again. However, with a modular approach, the microcontroller can be swapped out with minimal changes to the overall system, ensuring that production continues without major downtime.

This approach not only minimizes technical delays, but also helps maintain customer trust and market presence — both of which are critical in competitive and time-sensitive industries.

SEGGER Microcontroller