Summary:In today's Coredump Session, we sit down with Noah Pasek-Nelson and Chris Markus, the co-founders of BootLoop: an AI-powered platform purpose-built for firmware teams. The conversation gets into the real mechanics of how AI actually fits into embedded development workflows, from hardware bring-up and driver generation to hardware-in-the-loop testing and field debugging. Noah and Chris bring hard-won perspective from SpaceX, MIT, and FDA-regulated medical devices, and they don't shy away from the messy questions— hallucination, autonomy, trust, and what it actually takes to close the loop when your runtime is physical hardware.

Key Takeaways:

• BootLoop is an AI platform built for the entire firmware lifecycle, from hardware bring-up through field debugging, not just code generation.
• The two core pillars are hardware understanding (ingesting schematics, data sheets, netlists) and hardware interaction (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, GDB).
• Firmware engineers only spend about 20% of their time writing code. The rest is testing, debugging, and validation, which is where BootLoop focuses.
• Agents do their best work in tight feedback loops. BootLoop builds, flashes, and tests on device automatically so the agent can iterate without human intervention.
• Hardware understanding eliminates hallucination by grounding the model in your specific chips, register maps, and pin configurations rather than public code averages.
• Power optimization is a standout use case: feed in the data sheet, connect a power meter, set a target, and come back to optimized code.
• BootLoop supports C, C++, Rust, Zephyr, bare metal, and embedded Linux. HDL and FPGA support is coming.
• Sentinel, their field debugging product, automatically kicks off root cause analysis the moment a bug comes in from the field, before an engineer even sits down.
• Pricing is a flat fee with unlimited usage, intentionally aligned so the incentive is correct code, not more code.
• New chips are supported as fast as you can upload the documentation. There is no supported chips list.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro: AI at the Bench for Firmware Teams02:23 What Is BootLoop? Meet the Founders05:18 What Actually Changes Day-to-Day for Firmware Engineers07:13 The Hallucination Problem and How to Solve It in Hardware09:51 From Data Sheet to Flashed Device: A Live Workflow Demo11:20 Oscilloscopes, GDB, and Natural Language: Hardware Interaction Explained13:34 How Much Babysitting Does an AI Agent Actually Need?45:59 Greenfield vs. Brownfield: Where BootLoop Fits Best47:33 Audience Q&A: Business Model, Security, and Supported Chips57:35 Debugging in the Field: Sentinel, MCP, and Root Cause Analysis1:00:04 Closing Thoughts and How to Get a Demo

Join the Interrupt Slack ⁠⁠

⁠⁠Watch this episode on YouTube [ADD Playlist YT Link from here)⁠⁠

Follow Memfault

• ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠

Other ways to listen:

⁠⁠Apple Podcasts

iHeartRadio⁠⁠

⁠⁠Amazon Music

GoodPods

Castbox

⁠⁠

⁠⁠Visit our website