Synopsys and Vector Informatik have announced a new strategic collaboration focused on supporting the industry-wide transition to software-defined vehicles (SDVs).
Together, the companies are aiming to deliver pre-integrated solutions that leverage the expertise Vector has fostered through its ‘Software Factory’, and the experiences that Synopsys has had with electronics digital twins. The jointly-developed solutions will, themselves, enable automotive companies to ‘shift-left’ software validation, to find and prevent defects early in the development process, improving developer productivity, while accelerating both software development and deployment throughout the vehicle lifecycle.
Vector and Synopsis rooted their collaboration as a response to the pressure faced by automakers to transition software development from sequential design to agile and continuous development flows. The companies highlighted that this transition is critical to addressing increasing complexity, supporting more vehicle platforms and variants, mitigating the limitations of physical test benches, and streamlining collaboration between OEMs and their suppliers. These increasing complexities, Vector and Synopsis say, alongside frictions in current software toolchains and processes demonstrate the need for a new, seamless, and highly automated ‘shift left’ approach to be onboarded that can help build efficient, scalable, software factories.
In working to alleviate these challenges, Vector and Synopsis will combine their SDV development capabilities to help automakers to reduce development costs, facilitate faster development iterations, and enhance software quality, from early compliance verification to over-the-air updates, and dynamic data collection. Initially, their collaboration will focus on advancing the SIL Kit, an open-source library used to enable vehicle-level digital twins. Later on they will look to integrate Vector’s MICROSAR embedded software and CANoe, with Synopsys’ Silver solution and Virtualizer Development Kits (VDKs) to provide ready-to-use virtual electronic control units (vECUs) for all types of ECUs within an SDV architecture.
