[acuozzo]

> the level of testing required is much higher than software

No dispute there. I suppose I meant "simply" instead of "easily".

Outside of aeronautics software (specifically, aviation and spaceships/NASA), the topology of the software solution space can change dramatically during development.

Stated differently: the cyclomatic complexity of a codebase is absurdly volatile, especially during the exploratory development stage, but even later on... things can very abruptly change.

AFAICT, this is not really the case with chip design. That is, the sheer amount of testing you have to do is high, but the very nature of *what you're testing* isn't changing under your feet all the time.

This means that the construction of a test suite can largely be front-loaded which I think of as "simple", I suppose...