Continental Partners With Synopsys To Propel Software-Defined Vehicle Development

Continental, an automotive technology company, has revealed a collaboration with Synopsys to expedite the development and validation of software features and applications for the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV). This partnership involves the integration of Synopsys' virtual prototyping solutions for virtual Electronic Control Units (vECU) within Continental's Automotive Edge (CAEdge) cloud-based development framework.

“The software-defined vehicle requires working on hardware, software, applications, and validation in parallel, all while maintaining the highest level of quality and safety. Synopsys’ virtual ECUs and vehicle digital twin capabilities enable us to develop and test advanced software solutions earlier, so they can be deployed to vehicles faster,” said Gilles Mabire, CTO at Continental Automotive.

Car manufacturers and suppliers are increasingly relying on comprehensive tools to simulate digital features' performance and ensure compatibility with both existing and new car models. CAEdge stands out by providing a cloud-based development environment that significantly reduces the time traditionally needed for software-intensive vehicle architectures.

The CAEdge platform, characterised by its modular hardware and software, connects vehicles to the cloud, featuring a virtual workbench for developing, supplying and maintaining software-intensive system functions. Within this framework, digital representations of real-world physical devices, such as vECUs and the vehicle digital twin, streamline the development and validation of software solutions before general hardware availability.

Synopsys' virtual prototyping tools play a pivotal role in simplifying the deployment of individual vECUs and vehicle digital twins. These tools combine multiple vECUs with vehicle dynamics, sensor simulations, and environmental simulations, supporting a full range of vECU abstractions (L1 through L4) and mixed abstraction vehicle simulation. Notably, they come with the largest library of models developed within an automotive semiconductor and software ecosystem.

“The combination of CAEdge and Synopsys virtual prototyping tools marks a significant step in accelerating the deployment of the software-defined vehicle," said Tom De Schutter, VP of Engineering in the Systems Design Group at Synopsys.