SAICEC Partners with Siemens to Accelerate Software-Defined Vehicle Development with Digital Twins

SAICEC leverages Siemens‘ PAVE360 to create comprehensive chip-to-vehicle digital twins, enabling early validation and integrating the latest Arm automotive IP, including the new Zena CSS.

In a significant move to address the growing complexity of software-defined vehicles (SDVs), Siemens has announced a partnership with SAICEC, a leading provider of chip and system design services for the automotive industry. SAICEC will use Siemens’ PAVE360 software to build complex digital twins of entire automotive architectures, facilitating certified chip-to-vehicle verification long before physical hardware is available.

This initiative tackles a critical challenge in modern automotive development, where hardware and software teams often work in silos without a system-level view until late in the process. This frequently leads to costly redesigns when final hardware fails certification. By creating a system-level digital twin with PAVE360, developers can perform functional validation from the earliest design stages, accelerating SDV development and helping OEMs identify and integrate next-generation chip technologies at the required scale and speed.

Extending Capabilities with Arm Automotive IP

A key enabler of this digital twin approach is the integration of advanced Arm® automotive intellectual property (IP). The PAVE360 solution provides developers with cloud-based access to virtual models of Arm IP, far in advance of silicon availability. This includes first-to-market support for the new Arm Zena™ Compute Subsystems (CSS), following Siemens’ longstanding collaboration with Arm which previously included a virtual platform for the Arm Cortex®-A720AE.

The Zena CSS is specifically designed for highly complex, mixed-criticality, and AI-defined workloads. Virtual environments like PAVE360 are essential for developers to address the inherent challenges of these next-generation vehicle platforms, allowing them to assess and prevent system integration failures before physical hardware and software are combined.

Siemens’ unique position, offering integrated EDA and PLM/ALM solutions, allows for the creation of a multi-domain digital twin. This comprehensive approach enables the early identification of potential issues, ensuring better integration and validation of the entire system—from a single chip to the complete vehicle—throughout the entire development cycle.