IPG Automotive’s CarMaker simulation technology for analyzing various types of transportation, including software-defined vehicles, has been integrated with the Synopsys’ Silver platform, a validation tool for virtual ECUs (VECUs) using software-in-the-loop.
This combination enables software architects, function developers and application engineers to develop ECU production code individually or bundled in a time-efficient and highly automated x-in-the-loop environment. Diagnostic interfaces, restbus models and bus monitoring can therefore be tested virtually.
“The combination of Synopsys Silver and CarMaker enables developers to increase testing depth in the early stages of the development process, to detect faults quickly and safely in short loops and therefore to speed up development already today with one of the most advanced toolchains,” commented Martin Elbs, senior vice president and chief customer officer at IPG Automotive.The coupling of VECUs with the full virtual vehicle within CarMaker enables signal- and scenario-based validation in all stages of development, such as for typical Autosar projects.As a direct co-simulation or via the FMU interface from CarMaker, synthetic or realistic input parameters stimulate the software in the VECU. Afterward, the calculated control parameters are fed back into the simulation environment. The network communication can also be modeled as a virtual bus.In contrast to a model-only approach, VECUs can be generated from the complete application software, the real production code, or the binary ECU data compiled from it.VECUs can be tested in parallel on any number of computing nodes in the cloud. Independence from hardware enables faster and more flexible testing. As a consequence, developers achieve much greater test coverage.“The automotive industry is accelerating software-defined vehicle validation through the deployment of virtualization solutions. The integration of VECUs, developed with the Synopsys‘ Silver platform and IPG CarMaker accelerates the execution of virtual test scenarios, enabling vehicle manufacturers to start validation earlier with reduced verification and validation costs,” said Tom De Schutter, vice president of engineering for the systems design group at Synopsys.
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