A new era has dawned on the automotive industry’s journey toward a software-defined future, with the recent news that Siemens is expanding cloud service options for its PAVE360 platform. The system, tailored for the rapidly emerging world of software-defined vehicle (SDV) development, will now be accessible through Microsoft Azure, leveraging the high-performance capabilities of AMD GPUs and CPUs. This pivotal collaboration not only represents a convergence of three industry powerhouses—Siemens, Microsoft, and AMD—but also signals a substantive leap forward in scalable automotive development, validation, and simulation.
Software-defined vehicles stand at the heart of the next automotive revolution. SDVs transform traditional cars into intelligent, connected machines, governed by thousands of lines of code and complex sensing systems. The need for toolsets that can keep pace with this complexity is acute—and Siemens’ PAVE360 has long been recognized as a premier systems-of-systems development and validation environment.
Now, with PAVE360 available on Azure, the longstanding barriers of hardware-centric prototyping, siloed simulation, and staggeringly high computing demands are being systematically dismantled.
By bringing PAVE360 to Azure, Siemens is answering a dual call:
But Azure’s capabilities alone would not suffice; the sophistication and realism of PAVE360’s digital twin environment demand immense graphics and compute firepower. Enter AMD’s Radeon PRO GPUs and EPYC CPUs. These hardware platforms are renowned not only for raw performance but also for their efficiency under the heavy, parallel workloads characteristic of virtual vehicle prototyping, sensor fusion, and real-time scenario simulation.
Salil Raje, AMD’s SVP and GM of adaptive and embedded computing, characterizes the partnership succinctly: developers can now harness state-of-the-art Radeon PRO V710 GPUs and EPYC CPUs via Azure to build, test, and iterate on next-generation automotive technology, all without direct investment in on-premise hardware.
Through this model, developers can:
First, the migration of critical design, simulation, and validation activities to the cloud raises legitimate concerns about data security and intellectual property protection. Automotive intellectual property is not just valuable; it’s mission-critical, particularly in a fiercely competitive, innovation-driven sector.
Second, reliance on cloud infrastructure introduces new dependencies. While Azure’s reliability is industry-leading, downtime, compliance shifts, or changes to service availability could pose potential business hazards—especially for smaller suppliers building their process flows atop these services.
Third, the specter of cloud costs looms large. High-performance computation, vast simulation runs, and data storage can quickly escalate operating expenses. Organizations must plan for careful resource management, cost forecasting, and regular review to ensure that agility doesn’t give way to unexpected budget overruns.
Finally, there’s a strategic risk: as more core automotive development activities move into third-party cloud ecosystems, manufacturers risk losing some operational control and negotiating leverage. It’s a trade-off between convenience, performance, and control that every automaker will need to evaluate in terms of long-term digital strategy.
Unparalleled Flexibility: Development teams can scale resources up or down on demand, access best-of-breed simulation tools remotely, and collaborate across continents as easily as they would across cubicles.
Shortened Time-to-Market: The ability to run thousands of virtual validation scenarios in parallel means faster iterations and earlier product launches—a significant competitive advantage in a red-hot SDV space.
Proactive Fault Management: System-aware validation means defect discovery moves far left in the development lifecycle. Instead of troubleshooting in the factory or on the road—when costs and risks skyrocket—teams can zero in on issues while still in the digital domain.
Empowering the SDV Ecosystem: By making advanced validation and prototyping tools broadly accessible, smaller suppliers and new entrants can participate more meaningfully in vehicle innovation, driving broader industry transformation.
But such a transformation demands more than technical prowess. Customers will look for assurances around uptime, data residency, regulatory compliance, and integration hooks with their own digital engineering pipelines. Siemens, with its long heritage in industrial automation and mission-critical software, brings credibility to these challenges. Its willingness to partner with both Microsoft and AMD to create a best-in-class stack signals that Siemens understands the importance of a seamless, multi-vendor environment for the automotive giants of tomorrow.
Yet, staying ahead will mean continuously investing—not only in scaling up PAVE360’s core simulation capabilities but also in enabling AI-driven analytics at the edge, supporting more open APIs, and maintaining support for fast-evolving industry standards.
Implications are profound:
The competitive advantages—faster validation, proactive fault detection, and democratized access to state-of-the-art tools—are clear. But so too are the imperatives: robust cloud security, careful cost control, and a steady eye on evolving standards.
As SDVs evolve from buzzword concepts into everyday reality, it’s clear that the winners in this space will be those who not only build world-class vehicles, but who also master the cloud-first, AI-driven, simulation-rich processes that enable them to do so, at scale.
For the automotive R&D community, the message is inescapable: the road to the future runs through the cloud, and those who harness its full potential will define what the next generation of mobility can achieve.
Source: develop3d.com Siemens PAVE360 uses AMD GPUs to run on Microsoft Azure
Rethinking Software-Defined Vehicles in the Cloud
Software-defined vehicles stand at the heart of the next automotive revolution. SDVs transform traditional cars into intelligent, connected machines, governed by thousands of lines of code and complex sensing systems. The need for toolsets that can keep pace with this complexity is acute—and Siemens’ PAVE360 has long been recognized as a premier systems-of-systems development and validation environment.Now, with PAVE360 available on Azure, the longstanding barriers of hardware-centric prototyping, siloed simulation, and staggeringly high computing demands are being systematically dismantled.
The Why: Demand for Pervasive, Cloud-Powered Automotive Simulation
The demand for high-fidelity simulation in SDV development is intensifying. Vehicle manufacturers face mounting pressure to accelerate timelines, reduce cost, and, crucially, catch system faults before they reach the production line. Traditional methods—building physical prototypes, tracking down elusive software bugs post-facto, and developing in segmented silos—simply don’t cut it in a world where advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), infotainment, and AI-driven perception are table stakes.By bringing PAVE360 to Azure, Siemens is answering a dual call:
- The need for scalable, easily accessible high-performance compute power to simulate complex vehicle interactions and AI workloads.
- The expectation of seamless collaboration between engineers, designers, and software developers, regardless of their physical location.
Azure and AMD: The Backbone of Next-Gen SDV Validation
At the heart of Siemens’ announcement is the pragmatic choice of Microsoft Azure. Azure has rapidly matured into a cloud platform synonymous with enterprise-grade AI, cloud-native application support, and robust security. This makes it an ideal foundation for the massive computational and data throughput required by SDV simulation.But Azure’s capabilities alone would not suffice; the sophistication and realism of PAVE360’s digital twin environment demand immense graphics and compute firepower. Enter AMD’s Radeon PRO GPUs and EPYC CPUs. These hardware platforms are renowned not only for raw performance but also for their efficiency under the heavy, parallel workloads characteristic of virtual vehicle prototyping, sensor fusion, and real-time scenario simulation.
Salil Raje, AMD’s SVP and GM of adaptive and embedded computing, characterizes the partnership succinctly: developers can now harness state-of-the-art Radeon PRO V710 GPUs and EPYC CPUs via Azure to build, test, and iterate on next-generation automotive technology, all without direct investment in on-premise hardware.
What PAVE360 Does Differently: Simulation, Scale, and System Awareness
PAVE360 sets itself apart by offering a “system-aware” approach to vehicle development. Rather than treating hardware, software, and connected subsystems as separate development tracks, PAVE360 offers a unified simulation environment. This holistic perspective is crucial for rooting out defects that only reveal themselves through the interplay of disparate subsystems—a common pitfall in contemporary automotive engineering.Through this model, developers can:
- Run thousands of detailed, virtual driving scenarios incorporating real-world conditions.
- Test advanced AI perception and recognition models, essential for robust ADAS and autonomous features.
- Validate infotainment systems’ performance and visual fidelity.
- Quickly identify and isolate faults at the system, software, or hardware level before a single bolt is tightened on a physical prototype.
Hidden Risks in the Cloud-Driven SDV Revolution
As transformative as this cloud-first approach is, it’s not without nuanced risks that stakeholders need to weigh carefully.First, the migration of critical design, simulation, and validation activities to the cloud raises legitimate concerns about data security and intellectual property protection. Automotive intellectual property is not just valuable; it’s mission-critical, particularly in a fiercely competitive, innovation-driven sector.
Second, reliance on cloud infrastructure introduces new dependencies. While Azure’s reliability is industry-leading, downtime, compliance shifts, or changes to service availability could pose potential business hazards—especially for smaller suppliers building their process flows atop these services.
Third, the specter of cloud costs looms large. High-performance computation, vast simulation runs, and data storage can quickly escalate operating expenses. Organizations must plan for careful resource management, cost forecasting, and regular review to ensure that agility doesn’t give way to unexpected budget overruns.
Finally, there’s a strategic risk: as more core automotive development activities move into third-party cloud ecosystems, manufacturers risk losing some operational control and negotiating leverage. It’s a trade-off between convenience, performance, and control that every automaker will need to evaluate in terms of long-term digital strategy.
Notable Strengths: Flexibility, Speed, and Early Fault Detection
The benefits, however, are undeniable. By uniting Siemens’ domain-specific simulation excellence with Azure’s scalable platform and AMD’s computational horsepower, the offering tremendously expands what’s possible for automotive OEMs and their supplier ecosystems.Unparalleled Flexibility: Development teams can scale resources up or down on demand, access best-of-breed simulation tools remotely, and collaborate across continents as easily as they would across cubicles.
Shortened Time-to-Market: The ability to run thousands of virtual validation scenarios in parallel means faster iterations and earlier product launches—a significant competitive advantage in a red-hot SDV space.
Proactive Fault Management: System-aware validation means defect discovery moves far left in the development lifecycle. Instead of troubleshooting in the factory or on the road—when costs and risks skyrocket—teams can zero in on issues while still in the digital domain.
Empowering the SDV Ecosystem: By making advanced validation and prototyping tools broadly accessible, smaller suppliers and new entrants can participate more meaningfully in vehicle innovation, driving broader industry transformation.
Critical Analysis: Siemens’ Strategic Bet on the Cloud
Siemens’ move is as much about business model transformation as it is about technical innovation. By betting on pervasive cloud delivery, Siemens positions itself as a driver of automotive digital transformation—a space where agility and adaptability are outpacing tradition-bound processes.But such a transformation demands more than technical prowess. Customers will look for assurances around uptime, data residency, regulatory compliance, and integration hooks with their own digital engineering pipelines. Siemens, with its long heritage in industrial automation and mission-critical software, brings credibility to these challenges. Its willingness to partner with both Microsoft and AMD to create a best-in-class stack signals that Siemens understands the importance of a seamless, multi-vendor environment for the automotive giants of tomorrow.
Yet, staying ahead will mean continuously investing—not only in scaling up PAVE360’s core simulation capabilities but also in enabling AI-driven analytics at the edge, supporting more open APIs, and maintaining support for fast-evolving industry standards.
The Road Ahead: Implications for Automotive R&D
The availability of PAVE360 on Azure, powered by AMD’s leading graphics and compute technologies, gives us a glimpse of the future of automotive R&D. In this future, the design studio, the simulation lab, and the test track increasingly reside in the cloud.Implications are profound:
- Data-Driven Design: SDV architectures allow for post-sale feature enhancements and real-time improvement cycles. Cloud-based simulation accelerates the feedback loop between field data and product enhancement.
- Global Collaboration: As supply chains and engineering teams further decentralize, cloud-based environments will be critical for synchronous, around-the-globe development.
- Sustainability and Cost Control: By reducing the dependence on physical prototypes, organizations not only save costs but also significantly reduce waste and environmental impact—a matter of growing importance as regulatory pressures mount.
Navigating the New Norm: What Organizations Must Ask
For organizations eyeing a leap to continual engineering in the cloud, key questions include:- How will we secure our intellectual property in an always-on, globally accessible cloud?
- Can our internal processes and legacy apps integrate smoothly with PAVE360 and similar cloud-based platforms?
- What level of control and customization will we retain over our simulation environments?
- Are we prepared for the cultural and operational shift toward cloud-native development?
- How can we forecast, monitor, and control cloud usage costs to avoid budget surprises?
Conclusion: The Age of Cloud-Centric Automotive Engineering Has Arrived
Siemens’ decision to expand PAVE360’s reach through Microsoft Azure and AMD’s GPU muscle marks a moment of inflection for the automotive sector’s digital evolution. With this move, the critical path between innovation and realization grows ever shorter, less hazardous, and infinitely more flexible.The competitive advantages—faster validation, proactive fault detection, and democratized access to state-of-the-art tools—are clear. But so too are the imperatives: robust cloud security, careful cost control, and a steady eye on evolving standards.
As SDVs evolve from buzzword concepts into everyday reality, it’s clear that the winners in this space will be those who not only build world-class vehicles, but who also master the cloud-first, AI-driven, simulation-rich processes that enable them to do so, at scale.
For the automotive R&D community, the message is inescapable: the road to the future runs through the cloud, and those who harness its full potential will define what the next generation of mobility can achieve.
Source: develop3d.com Siemens PAVE360 uses AMD GPUs to run on Microsoft Azure
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