Case Study: Audi AG achieves scalable autonomous driving simulations with Microsoft Azure from Microsoft Corporation

The road to autonomous driving runs through the cloud

Audi AG faced a growing challenge in developing and validating automated driving systems: its simulations depended on enormous volumes of sensor data, and future vehicles were expected to generate up to four gigabytes of data per second per vehicle. Existing in-house storage and compute clusters could no longer scale economically to support this demand, so Audi turned to Microsoft Corporation and its Azure cloud services, including Azure DNS, Azure SQL Database, Azure Blob Storage, and other Azure tools.

Microsoft Corporation implemented a cloud-based simulation environment on Microsoft Azure, helping Audi redesign and automate its testing framework while improving scalability, speed, and security. The new setup enabled faster simulation runs, easier global data access, and stronger protection for intellectual property through Azure key management and security features. As a result, Audi can now process and analyze large sensor datasets more efficiently and focus more on the development and safety of autonomous driving technologies.

Audi AG

Adrian James

Head of Automated Driving Safety