Enabling Continuous Software Engineering for Embedded Systems Architectures with Virtual Prototypes

Continuous software engineering aims at orchestrating engineering knowledge from various disciplines in order to deal with the rapid changes within the ecosystems of which software-based systems are part of. The literature claims that one means to ensure these prompt responses is to incorporate virtual prototypes of the system as early as possible in the development process, such that requirements and architecture decisions are verified early and continuously by means of simulations. Despite the maturity of practices for designing and assessing architectures, as well as for virtual prototyping, it is still not clear how to jointly consider the practices from these disciplines within development processes, in order to address the dynamics imposed by continuous software engineering. In this regard, we discuss in this paper how to orchestrate architecture drivers and design specification techniques with virtual prototypes, to address the demands of continuous software engineering in development processes. Our proposals are based on experiences from research and industry projects in various domains such as automotive, agriculture, construction, and medical devices.