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Introduction
The promise of AI in the automotive industry lies in delivering high-value consumer experiences in vehicles, including applications such as predictive maintenance, route planning, voice assistants, battery range estimation, and more. In addition to evolving today’s system architectures to handle the increasing heterogeneity of applications and stringent electronics requirements for compute, performance, and functional safety, OEMs must re-engineer their automotive engineering workflows to design, test, and integrate more software needed for more applications – quickly, with confidence, and cost-effectively. To fully unlock these AI-driven capabilities, automotive design and development must be re-engineered to a “shift left” approach powered by electronics digital twins.
NXP announced on January 5, 2026, the S32N7 super-integration processor series for the intelligent vehicle core, enabling automakers to accelerate their shift to AI-powered vehicles. Synopsys and NXP have also delivered a virtual development kit for the S32N7 as part of their long-term Center of Excellence collaboration.
“At NXP, we pave the way for AI-powered vehicles with S32N7-an intelligent vehicle core that unifies domains, removes silos, and safely leverages vehicle data for cross-domain AI” said Joe Nguyen, Senior Director, Automotive Processors at NXP. “Leveraging our long-term Center of Excellence collaboration with Synopsys for the development of virtual development kits, we can further support carmakers in their effort to start development earlier, reduce validation costs and accelerate availability of higher quality software throughout the vehicle lifecycle.”
Synopsys VDK for NXP S32N7
The S32N7 delivers safe, modular computing with hardware-enforced function isolation, enabling OEMs to securely run multiple vehicle core functions - including body, motion and chassis control, vehicle dynamics, gateway, data management and ADAS up to Level 2 autonomy. It further supports agentic AI capabilities, advanced networking, and ultra-low power operation, empowering carmakers to develop secure, differentiating features at the heart of their vehicles.
The S32N7 platform is fully supported by Synopsys Virtualizer™ Development Kits (VDKs), providing a comprehensive environment for early software development and system integration. By leveraging VDKs, automotive engineers can begin prototyping, debugging, and validating software on the S32N7 architecture well before physical silicon becomes available up to 12 months ahead of availability. Additional features and capabilities supported by the Synopsys VDK for the NXP S32N7 family of high-performance computers, include:
- The S32N7 virtual SoC model includes support for the main processing subsystem, system control and safety, accelerators, security, ethernet subsystem and real-time communication subsystem.
- VDK tools provide powerful debug and analysis capabilities enabling HW/SW events correlation, accelerated root cause analysis, real world and virtual IO connection, fault injection and corner case testing.
- The VDK is integrated with leading ecosystem tools and software including debugging and testing tools, physical system simulation and operating systems.
Figure 1. The VDK for NXP S32N7 provides a comprehensive environment for early software development and system integration
Proven in pre-silicon development
At NXP, the VDK for NXP S32N7 has played a crucial role in advancing pre-silicon software development. With the VDK, software developers have been able to develop and validate their software development kit (SDK) 12 months in advance of silicon. This approach has helped accelerate the readiness of critical software components, allowing teams to identify potential issues early in the development cycle.
In addition, the early availability of the SDK in conjunction with the VDK ensures that NXP RTOS and HLOS partners, and automotive companies have access to an integrated and validated VDK + SDK solution. It provides a solid foundation for software development to start 12 months in advance of Silicon for the ecosystem and automotive companies, enabling the overall automotive development process to ‘shift left,’ reduce integration risk and support more reliable start of production schedules.
Long term collaboration for the S32 automotive processing platform
Synopsys and NXP have collaborated for many years to deliver a broad range of virtual SoC models for the S32 automotive processing platform. The VDK for the NXP S32N7 family builds on existing support for the S32N55 super- integration processor. Customer Spotlight: NXP's S32N Series of Processors Enables Vehicle Super-Integration for Central Compute Applications
In addition, Synopsys provides the broadest library of NXP S32 virtual SoC models proven in pre-silicon development, integrated in full virtual ECU models and deployed in automotive Tier and OEM system verification and validation flows. The support includes virtual SoC models for processors such as:
- S32G Vehicle Network Processors
- S32N Vehicle Super-Integration Processors
- S32Z and S32E Real-Time Processors
- S32K Automotive General-Purpose Microcontrollers
- S32J High-Performance Ethernet Switch and Network Controller
Virtualization to enable Electronics Digital Twins for shift left automotive engineering
The NXP S32 automotive processing platform is designed to accelerate the shift toward intelligent, next-generation vehicles. It enables faster development cycles, streamlined software reuse, and flexible hardware integration across multiple vehicle systems - while optimizing the vehicle's performance and power efficiency. Our solutions bring real-time safety, security, scalability and sustainability to every vehicle.
Electronics digital twins (eDTs) are a virtual representation of the electronic systems within a physical product, such as the multiple Electronic Control Units (ECUs) in a car. Unlike traditional digital twins that focus mainly on physical, multi-physics challenges, eDTs extend the concept to encompass both hardware and software, enabling the development, verification, and validation of electronics architectures and the software running on them.
With VDKs supporting a broad range of S32 processors, automotive Tier 1 and OEMs can quickly assemble full virtual ECUs (vECUs) and virtual vehicle eDTs in advance of physical ECU and vehicle hardware availability. These eDTs can be deployed in the cloud and in CI/CD workflows. This results in a ‘shift left’ for software development, verification and validation (starting 12 months earlier), simplifying system software integration, and reducing dependencies and risk associated with physical test bench integration and validation. It reduces development costs, accelerates time to market and accelerates automotive innovation.
Meet us at CES | Contact Synopsys
For more information about the Synopsys VDK for the new NXP S32N7 family and Synopsys eDT capabilities for automotive verification and validation, contact Synopsys.
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