For many years, embedded processing has fallen into two distinct camps based on the necessity of the design: situations calling for affordable and flexible usability would rely on MCUs, and designs that exceeded the capacity of an MCU would instead turn to an applications processor. Although, it has not been easy for embedded designers to seamlessly scale across MCUs and applications processors. Growing consumer demand for enhanced user experience and increasing functionality in the smart, secure products have driven the growth of both MCUs and applications processors. However, many use cases have emerged where neither applications processors nor MCUs perfectly address the needs of the situation. A specific problem is when there is a need to scale to higher performance without having to run a full Linux machine. A perfect example of this issue would be if an appliance designer wanted to add Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities (i.e., data processing, wireless connectivity, display support) to a product design without drastically increasing the per-unit cost or greatly extending the time-to-market with an extensive redesign.