The world’s first Full-System Simulation tool to revolutionize software programming in autonomous driving, aviation, embedded vision and further highly innovative applications

Project Information

FuSy

Grant agreement ID: 858051

DOI

10.3030/858051

Project closed

EC signature date 29 April 2019

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 30 April 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 2 841 711,25

EU contribution

€ 1 989 197,00

Coordinated by

SILEXICA GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FuSy (The world’s first Full-System Simulation tool to revolutionize software programming in autonomous driving, aviation, embedded vision and further highly innovative applications)

Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2021-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Intelligent technologies such as autonomous cars, augmented reality, or drones will soon become an integral part of our everyday lives and revolutionize many areas of our economy and industry. However, the technology community currently working on the development of these products is facing a substantial problem: the dramatic gap between hardware and software development. While the necessary, highly performant hardware is currently available to design these new technologies, an important hurdle persists in programming the software to be run on hardware platforms with increasingly numerous, complex, and heterogeneous components. Currently, users must rely on educated guesses and laborious manual methods to handle the increasing complexity.

Silexica offers the solution SLX, the first programming tool that gives, in an automated process, unprecedented system insights into the behavior of applications running on complex hardware platforms. SLX allows to optimally make use of the existing hardware and computing power and automates programming tasks that take months with state-of-the-art methods into a few hours.

SLX was introduced as a tool suite by the company Silexica in 2015 in the wireless baseband and 5G industries. Now, within the EIC Accelerator project, it will be upgraded to better support the requirements of emerging intelligent technologies. Silexica plans a step-by-step roll-out in new market segments of automotive, embedded vision/ robotics, aerospace etc. With the help of the EIC Accelerator funding, Silexica expects to significantly increase its market share and reach a staff count of more than 200 EU-based employees by 2024.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Silexica developed a full system simulation environment to augment the existing products with the developed technology. Silexica was able to extend the analysis technology with a powerful performance simulation framework to address various types of hardware accelerators, such as GPUs, AI accelerators, and FPGAs. The solution enables user workflows that benefit from automated decision-making based on the simulation results when targeting hardware accelerators and heterogeneous hardware platforms.
The product readiness was successfully proven with extended testing and quality assurance activities while marketing activities were ramped up to support sales engagements.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The capabilities of the new software analysis as well as simulation framework for specialized hardware elements is unseen in the market and can therefore be considered as progress beyond state of the art. While the work ahead under this project is certainly challenging, the team remains confident to reach expected results until the end of the project.

The project continues to have a very high impact on Silexica’s economic development. The upgraded SLX product will become the main pillar of the company’s future and is expected to significantly boost the company growth in terms of turnover and EU-based employees. With help of the EIC Accelerator, Silexica will be enabled to significantly increase its market share and reach a staff count of more than 200 EU-based employees by 2024.

Socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications: Silexica is an equal opportunity employer and promotes the employment of people independent of their sex, race, potential disabilities etc. This role-model function is also taken in terms of enabling remote work and therefore reducing traffic and pollution. When it comes to the project, Silexica is still on track to make intelligent technologies such as autonomous vehicles significantly easier to develop and thereby contributes to their timely introduction. This has a huge impact on society as well as the environment for preventing car accidents, enabling low-cost mobility and reducing congestion, just to name a few.

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