Automotive Ethernet PHYs enable future driving scenarios by providing the necessary physical throughput power. While software brings added value for security, diagnosis, energy efficiency and safety. As the functional requirements for automotive PHY drivers differ from general purpose applications, additional functionality is needed to closely monitor and diagnose the device and to create advanced use cases like Layer-1 wake-up and sleep. In this session, these specific requirements for automotive Ethernet PHY SW are discussed. Existing PHY SW frameworks such as Linux or AUTOSAR are introduced and compared. Finally, the session will touch upon typical application scenarios which require interaction with PHY SW. This includes use cases like gPTP time synchronization and 802.1X Port-based Network Access Control (PNAC).