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Digital twins are evolving.
For decades, they have played a growing role in the design and lifecycle management of mechanical and other physical systems. But now, as silicon and software increasingly define core product functions, that paradigm is morphing into something new: electronics digital twins (eDTs).
An eDT is a virtual model of a product’s electronics, including hardware and software, which can be represented at multiple levels of abstraction. By virtualizing both electronic hardware and embedded software — and characterizing how they interact, their connections with other components, and how they respond to real-world environments and conditions — eDTs provide a far more granular and complete replica of a product or system.
In doing so, they help accelerate innovation, enable quality improvements, and provide new opportunities for design, development, and management throughout the entire product lifecycle.
They also represent a profound digital transformation for OEMs. To harness their full potential, a platform strategy must be embraced, with digital infrastructure that:
- Supports a broad set of use cases throughout the product lifecycle.
- Integrates a wide range of capabilities, including models, tools, and software.
- Enables collaboration across functions and ecosystem participants, such as suppliers and tool vendors.
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Introducing the Synopsys eDT Platform
To streamline OEMs’ adoption of eDT strategies and technologies, we have launched the Synopsys eDT Platform: an open, cloud-ready infrastructure that empowers companies to build, deploy, and manage eDTs in a highly flexible and scalable way.
The eDT Platform is more than a collection of tools. It is a robust foundation that enables companies to create and tailor their own cloud-based environments — called eDT Labs — which combine tools, virtual models, and compute resources.
The platform is modular and extensible, with CLI/TEST APIs that facilitate integration with a wide variety of commercial and customer infrastructure, including software factories. It also provides key utilities for cloud deployment and collaboration:
- Role-based user management
- Access and encryption
- Administrative analytics tools
- Global license provisioning and control
- Workflow editor and automation
- Project lifecycle dashboards
Deployed via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or in a bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) model, the eDT Platform provides a comprehensive suite of utilities and management capabilities for a diverse set of use cases — from design evaluation and early software development to full-scale silicon-to-system development, validation, and collaboration.
Initially, the platform supports the following use cases:
- Early customer evaluation of new systems-on-chip (SoCs) or microcontrollers (MCUs). Frictionless access to early virtual prototypes reduces time-to-selection decisions.
- Early customer start-of-software development. “Shift-left” milestones by starting software development well before hardware availability with pre-integrated tools.
- Collaborative software development. Enable seamless collaboration between customer teams, suppliers, and tool vendors to accelerate time to market.
- System validation. Continuous integration/testing workflows with rapid provisioning of eDTs reduces validation effort while improving software quality.
Addressing automotive industry needs
While the eDT Platform’s modular architecture and broad integration capabilities make it adaptable to a wide range of industries and use cases, early adoption will be driven by the automotive sector.
Traditionally, automotive software has been developed and tested on hardware bench setups or in prototype vehicles using physical electronic control units (ECUs). Known as hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HiL) testing, these methods provide accuracy but can only begin once embedded hardware is available. As automotive systems grow more complex, this limited scalability often leads to “big bang” integration challenges when the test bench, hardware, and software must be brought together all at once.
HiL systems are also scarce, expensive to deploy and maintain, and frequently become bottlenecks. As a result, software issues are often discovered late in the development cycle, leaving minimal time to react and increasing the risk of delays to the start of production (SOP) — directly impacting vehicle sales and OEM profitability.
Accelerating development and validation to keep, or even pull in, the SOP has therefore become critical to success.
The Synopsys eDT Platform addresses these needs by providing:
- A virtual development environment that can be customized and shared within or across OEMs and suppliers well before physical ECUs are available.
- A flexible combination of Synopsys and third-party tools to quickly create a digital twin of the test bench and system under test.
- Cloud-based scalability and streamlined management, making it easy to integrate into CI/CD pipelines.
Enabling a rich ecosystem
Modern electronic systems are developed across complex value chains that span OEMs, silicon providers, software teams, tool vendors, and suppliers. An effective eDT strategy must therefore enable these participants to work together within shared, secure environments, while preserving intellectual property boundaries and operational independence.
The Synopsys eDT Platform was purpose-built for ecosystem enablement, supporting open integration, standard interfaces, and controlled collaboration.
We’re already working with a broad set of partners, and we welcome additional solutions, expertise, and participation. As the number of collaborators and integrated solutions grows, so too does the benefit and value for customers.
Dawn of a new era
Electronics digital twins are becoming essential for developing and managing the lifecycle of complex, AI-enabled, software-defined products and systems. eDTs hold great promise to transform how OEMs, suppliers, partners, and customers collaborate and innovate in advance of physical hardware readiness.
With the Synopsys eDT Platform, we are launching the infrastructure companies need to create shared ecosystems that simplify integration, control access, and accelerate workflows. We’ve designed the eDT Platform to make it easier to bring digital twins to an entirely new level — with electronics, silicon, and software.
It’s a new era for engineering, and this is only the beginning.
