An Investigative Study of Software- and Hardware-Based Dependencies in Automotive Software

Abstract

Modern vehicles are increasingly software driven, shifting Electronic Control Unit (ECU) development toward virtualized environments to enable pre-silicon testing and bypass physical hardware bottlenecks. This thesis investigates the portability barriers of retrofitting a production-level Basic Software (BSW) stack from Volvo AB onto a virtualized Infineon TC39x microcontroller using a Synopsys Virtualizer Development Kit (VDK). The success of the virtualization was evaluated against two primary criteria. These were verification of hardware initialization and successful deployment of the Operating System (OS) scheduler. The investigation revealed a distinct difference between the static initialization and dynamic execution phases of the software. During the static phase, procedural hardware dependencies were successfully mitigated. By developing Python-based workaround scripts to intercept memory-mapped Input/Output (I/O) and bypass simplified hardware ”stub modules” (the Memory Test Unit (MTU) and Power Management System (PMS)), execution time was iteratively extended. Furthermore, a ”warm start” memory injection strategy was implemented, capturing and mapping 7.45 MB of active Program and Data Flash from a physical reference ECU to overcome missing boot-sequence calibrations and diagnostic resets. This low-level register and memory manipulation enabled the virtual target to execute past early hardware checks and successfully initiate the OS on Core 0. However, when entering the dynamic phase at approximately 84 ms of runtime, the system encountered a terminal ”dependency explosion”. As execution transitioned to an asynchronous, event-driven environment, the OS kernel stalled due to missing timing-synchronized feedback from the Generic Timer Module (GTM) and Controller Area Network (CAN) controllers. This proves that functional stubbing is insufficient for Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) execution without synchronized peripheral simulations. Ultimately, this work documents the ”Retrofitting Trap” of forcing hardware-coupled binaries into virtual environments, highlighting the necessity for an industry paradigm shift toward simulation-aware, modular Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to support scalable, cloud-native validation of software-defined vehicles.