Methodology for unit test and regression framework

Disclosures herein describe a record and replay regression and unit test automation framework for simulating any hardware on a virtual machine to achieve thorough, affordable and efficient software testing. According to the disclosures herein, the test automation framework includes a recording stage where input and output messages for all the interfaces for a process (e.g., an embedded system or any software system or process) running on the original hardware may be recorded along with metadata in a space-optimized and efficient manner. The testing framework also includes a replay stage using innovative thread synchronization approaches that leverage the metadata to simulate the environment for the recorded embedded process in isolation, which may be done on an inexpensive machine or hardware. Thus, the original custom hardware, which may be expensive and costly to run, is not needed for the replay phase of testing.