In the race to develop software-defined vehicles (SDVs), automotive manufacturers (OEMs) and their suppliers are facing pressure from all angles. With vehicular codebases often exceeding those of commercial aircraft, OEMs must wrangle enormous complexity while shortening developing cycles. In addition, companies must deliver frequent software updates throughout the vehicle’s lifecycle, which continually assures quality, safety, security, and reliability. Further, cost pressures are enormous. These challenges demand faster, more rigorous software development, testing, and validation.

While traditional hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) testing rigs are still a mainstay for system validation, their expense, latency, and inflexibility are increasingly at odds with the agility required by today’s automotive software development practices. To enable earlier and more efficient software testing and validation, the industry is adopting cloud-based development practices and the use of virtual prototypes. 

Cloud-native development 

Automotive software is simultaneously becoming more expensive and central to a car’s identity. Infotainment, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), traction control, and even powertrain management are all shaped by lines of code. The growing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and the push toward fully autonomous transport have further increased the role and importance of automotive software. The shift from hardware-centric to software-centric vehicles means that OEMs and suppliers must rethink their development models.

The IT industry pioneered cloud-native development approaches, leading to web applications and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions that are quickly delivered and continuously updated. These approaches involve incremental development and a strong emphasis on automation. DevOps practices further bridged the gap between the software development process and its operational deployment environment. Thanks to technologies such as containerization, testing cycles are now performed and automated in a production-simulated environment.

This is one of the key challenges for OEMs and suppliers adopting cloud-native methods for SDV development: The replication of the operating environment — the vehicle — when developing and testing software.

While the cloud provides virtually unlimited compute and collaboration resources, physical hardware—the ultimate destination for automotive software—often lags behind in availability. Teams often wait months for electronic control units (ECUs) to be ready for initial testing and validation. If hardware revisions are required, it extends the waiting period before OEMs and their suppliers can fully test their software at scale. 

Virtual prototypes accelerate automotive software development

Virtual prototypes are models of target hardware that are used for software development, testing, and validation — before the hardware is available. Referred to as electronics digital twins (eDTs), these virtual prototypes simulate the behavior of automotive compute platforms; enable continuous software testing, integration, and delivery (CI/CD); and minimize the reliance on hardware and eliminate associated delays.

Virtual platforms are used throughout the embedded software industry for starting software development before hardware is available, which results in a significant time-to-market advantage. A notable example is the open-source community’s use of QEMU, an emulator that allows open-source software stacks to leverage cutting-edge Arm CPU features well before the corresponding hardware is available. But traditional emulation-based tools were never designed for the complexity of modern automotive processors, such as Arm’s Cortex-A720AE, or the runtime demands of continuous, cloud-based software development.

With Synopsys’s introduction of Virtualizer Native Execution, they are addressing these limitations and enabling Arm embedded software to be executed directly on Arm server CPUs—in the cloud, with no emulation or hardware required. This means developers can run workloads at the speed of the eventual hardware, roughly 100x faster than traditional instruction set simulators, while retaining the benefits of virtual prototypes and full compatibility with the existing ecosystem of models, tools, and workflows.

Here are some of the technical and operational impacts:

• Software teams can validate complex system-level behaviors early and often, reducing the dependency on HiL rigs during the development cycle.

• With architecture parity between cloud and vehicle CPU (via Arm’s instruction set), developers can use the same development tools to significantly reduce workflow complexity.

• Native execution on Arm-based cloud instances, such as AWS Graviton servers, enables continuous DevOps and CI/CD pipelines, with virtual prototypes providing the critical link between development and operational environments.

Leveraging the SOAFEE reference architecture

An essential part of this puzzle is the SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge) initiative. Led by Arm and other industry stakeholders, SOAFEE provides a standardized framework and reference architecture—based on the principles of modularity and orchestration—for SDV workloads. By adhering to common standards like SOAFEE, the ecosystem of automotive OEMs, suppliers, and technology leaders can increase interoperability and reduce vendor lock-in.

At Embedded World 2025, while in collaboration with Arm, Synopsys demonstrated how virtual prototypes, SOAFEE reference architecture, and cloud-to-edge software development come together:

• Leveraging Synopsys Virtualizer Native Execution in an AWS cloud environment, the demonstration featured an open-source autonomous driving workload running on top of the SOAFEE edge reference stack.

• Executed at real-time speed, the virtual prototype was approximately 100x faster than a comparable QEMU-based simulation.

• The demonstration showed how virtual prototypes replicate the structure of an edge device with sufficient granularity to validate real-world functionality and software behavior, while remaining scalable and shareable across teams and geographies. 

While the technical underpinnings are compelling, the business value of virtual prototypes and cloud-native development is just as important. Cloud-based workflows are becoming a prerequisite for meeting time-to-market expectations in a world where vehicle features are continuously updated via over-the-air (OTA) software pushes.

Synopsys’s collaboration with Arm and other SOAFEE partners is ongoing, and forthcoming advances to Virtualizer Native Execution will enable more complex scenarios and system-level parity. This includes better support for real-time behavior, safety domains, and full-vehicle E/E system integration. In the meantime, the automotive industry has a powerful foundation on which to build. 

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