With the transition to Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), traditional embedded development practices are no longer sufficient. Increasing system complexity, shrinking timelines, and the push for continuous validation demand a radical shift in how Electronic Control Units (ECUs) are developed and integrated. Enter the Virtual ECU (vECU)—a digital replica of the actual ECU that enables early, parallelized, and hardware-agnostic development and verification.

Industry experts have highlighted several challenges faced by OEMs and suppliers:
• Late availability of hardware leading to delayed software development
• Difficulty in continuous integration and testing
• Rising costs of prototype development and testing infrastructure, especially the Hardware in Loop (HiL) setups
• Late discovery of IP-related issues during HiL testing

Virtual ECUs offer a path to mitigate these challenges by enabling shift-left software development, thus reducing dependency on physical hardware and ensuring earlier software validation.

A Virtual ECU is a software representation of an electronic control unit, running on host servers or in the cloud. It mirrors the behavior and interfaces of the real ECU, enabling software-in-the-loop (SIL) and virtual processor-in-the-loop (vPIL) testing early in the development process.

Virtual ECU KPIs
To be effective, a Virtual ECU solution must satisfy critical KPIs:
• Fidelity: How accurately does the vECU model reflect the ECU environment?
• Availability: How early in the development cycle is the vECU available? Early availability enables front-loading of development and testing.
• Speed: Simulation performance relative to real time execution. How fast does the vECU execute relative to the real ECU?
• Cost Efficiency: Cost of building and deploying a vECU solution vs the reduced need for expensive hardware test benches during early development.
• Maintainability: Ease of maintaining and updating the vECU solution