In this study, the hardware used in real-time HIL simulation of electric drive systems are comparatively examined, and suitable platforms are suggested with respect to applications of electric drive systems. In the case study, a real-time simulation of vector controlled permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) drive system is performed on a hybrid parallel hardware platform with an Intel core at 3.0 GHz and a field programmable gate array (FPGA), and the issues associated with the real-time simulation are discussed. Figure A. Schematic representation of HIL simulation of PMSM drive Purpose: This study aims at examining the real-time simulation hardware used in electric drive systems and performing a real-time simulation of vector controlled permanent magnet synchronous machine drive. In line with obtained experiences, it is also aimed at giving perspectives in choosing suitable simulation hardware for real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation of electric drive systems. Theory and Methods: Real-time HIL simulation hardware and their technologies for electric drive systems are comparatively examined and classified with respect to system scale and dynamic response time. A vector controlled PMSM drive model is then developed in Matlab/Simulink. The real-time simulation of the drive is finally performed on a multi-core, FPGA based parallel hardware platform. Results: The results have shown that a PMSM drive at 10 kHz can be simulated in real-time on multi-core, FPGA based hardware. The results are presented, and the issues associated with the real-time simulation are discussed in detail in Section 3. Conclusion: This results in this study has confirmed that the real-time HIL simulation of electric drive systems running up to several kHz, can be realized on multi-core based parallel hardware platforms. The drive systems running in the range of hundreds of kHz can require FPGAs in their real-time HIL simulation. In these applications, the real-time technologies which enable to use automatic HDL coder in generating VHDL / Verilog code like SIMULINK HDL coder can be advised for those who are not expert in developing HDL. GPUs or interconnected multi-FPGAs can be suggested for the real-time simulation of large scale electric drive systems with the system dynamics at milliseconds and microseconds.