Chip design giant Synopsys has partnered with Vector, a German provider of embedded software and consulting services, to make developers in the auto sector more productive.

The companies’ collaboration will revolve around electronic control units, or ECUs. Those are the compact, ruggedized computers that power a vehicle’s subsystems. A modern car can have upwards of one hundred ECUs that each manage a different component.

Faster software testing 

Vector provides applications that make it easier to develop software for ECUs. Synopsys, meanwhile, competes one layer down the stack. It sells software that chip engineers use to design the ECUs themselves.

The two companies also have a presence in the professional services market. Vector can provide an automaker with software development assistance, as well as host training workshops for its programmers. Synopsys has a business unit focused on helping companies design custom chips.

Writing software for a vehicle’s ECU involves a significant amount of testing that is carried out in multiple phases. Developers have to make sure that their code is secure, works as intended and doesn’t use too many hardware resources. Synopsys’ new partnership with Vector is designed to streamline that testing workflow.

A Synopsys spokesperson explained to Boardroom Insight that “we plan to deliver a pre-integrated solution targeted to automotive companies to enable them to ‘shift-left’ software validation and improve engineering productivity, speeding up software development and deployment throughout the vehicle lifecycle.” Shift-left testing is a software industry term for carrying out quality validation earlier in the development cycle. 

In the initial phase of the partnership, Vector and Synopsys will work together to expand the adoption of SIL Kit, an open-source library developed by the former company. It’s designed to ease software-in-the-loop testing, one of the main methods with which auto sector developers scan their code for bugs. The technique involves spinning up a simulated ECU and testing how reliably a newly created piece of software runs on it. This virtual ECU, which is often hosted on a developer’s laptop, has an identical configuration to real-world ECU on which the code will eventually run.

There are several reasons developers test their code in simulations instead of simply running it on a physical ECU. One is speed: simulations can run faster than a real-world test. Cost is another factor. Putting together a fleet of test ECUs can require a significantly larger investment than launching a simulation program on a developer’s laptop.

Typically, auto makers use software-in-the-loop simulations to carry out the initial phase of the code testing workflow. Once the code moves closer to release, they run it on a physical ECU identical to the one that it will be expected to power in customer vehicles.

New product integrations 

In addition to expanding SIL Kit adoption, Synopsys and Vector plan to integrate several of their products. The goal is to ease the creation of the ECU simulations that developers use to test their code during the software-in-the-loop phase.

Building a virtual ECU manually is a resource-intensive process. One source of complexity is that a vehicle’s ECUs are usually based on different designs, which means developers have to create multiple simulations with varying technical characteristics. Additionally, creating such simulations requires highly specialized talent that isn’t always simple to come by. 

To address those challenges, Synopsys and Vector plan to develop a collection of “ready-to-use” virtual ECUs. Those offerings will reduce the need for auto makers to build custom simulations from scratch. 

The companies plan to power the virtual vECUs using four products: Vector’s MICROSAR embedded software stack and CANoe development toolkit, as well as Synopsys Silver and Synopsys Virtualizer Development Kits. The software vendors will integrate their products with one another to make them easier to use.

Synopsys Silver is a program for creating virtual ECUs. The company’s Synopsys Virtualizer Development Kits, meanwhile, are ready-to-use virtual versions of chips. The offerings provide the basic building blocks necessary to create a simulated environment for ECU testing. 

Vector, for its part, will add in its MICROSAR embedded software stack. It includes the core set of software features that an ECU requires to work. The platform can download updates, collect diagnostics data about the subsystem on which it runs and perform other essential tasks. Software components such as MICROSAR have an important role in ECU testing. When developers check a newly created piece of code for bugs, they have to check that it works well with the other software components of the ECU on which it will run.

The Synopsys-Vector product integration effort will also encompass the latter company’s CANoe product. It’s a set of tools for building ECU software that developers can use to write code, test it and perform related tasks. 

“Our pre-integrated solution will deliver value to automotive OEMs and Tier 1s, as well as to their partners such as consultancies, by providing a one-stop solution for embedded system level validation from silicon to systems,” the Synopsys spokesperson said. “It will optimize software development and deployment compared to coordinating across multiple partners and development environments in the automotive supply chain.”

We also asked about the joint solution’s professional services component. In the IT industry, vendors often bundle technology products with consulting offerings to help customers learn the ropes quicker.

“Both Vector and Synopsys offer consulting and engineering services to their customers to accelerate the impact of their solutions for those customers,” Synopsys told Boardroom Insight. “Both companies will continue to do this and will recommend the expertise of the other company in cases where this will be beneficial to the customer. This includes exploring opportunities to both support consulting and engineering services together for our planned pre-integrated solution.”

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