The Business Case for Full System Simulation

When embedded system software development and testing are constrained by the availability of target hardware and systems, the entire business faces problems. Issues include slow time-to-market, high capital and operating expenses (CapEx and OpEx), suboptimal quality management, and limited security testing. The pressure to support existing embedded systems across multiple hardware platforms places further stress on development, testing, and IT operations (IT Ops) organizations. This makes DevOps, agile development, and CI/CD difficult or impossible to implement. Advances in hardware and system simulation, as exemplified by Wind River® Simics® software, have changed the entire picture. Now, with Simics, developers and testers can work in virtual labs using software-based simulations of any target system.