Synplicity Delivers Seamless Support for Off-the-Shelf ASIC Prototyping Boards

Automated Technologies and Close Integration Between Off-the-Shelf Boards and the Certify Software Reduces Design Time and Costs (Visit us in Booth P02, Level One, La Palais des Congres)

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 2002-- Further easing the ASIC prototyping process, Synplicity, Inc. (Nasdaq:SYNP - news), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification of semiconductors, today announced it has enhanced its Certify® verification synthesis software to offer unprecedented support for off-the-shelf commercially available prototype boards. Making these boards readily available, Synplicity today named new standard board manufacturers to its Partners in Prototyping program. To deliver a "push-button" prototyping flow, the company also enhanced the Certify software's Quick Partitioning Technology (QPT) and automated the Certify pin-multiplier (CPM) feature, enabling, for the first time, an automated design flow for prototyping with off-the-shelf multi-FPGA boards. Additionally, the Certify software now offers a tight connection to standard prototyping hardware from leading vendors and includes integrated software files for some of the most popular boards. Using the new version of the Certify software with an off-the-shelf prototyping board, Synplicity believes designers can develop a functional ASIC prototype in hours rather than days or weeks.

"There is little question that prototypes offer many benefits for verifying complex ASIC designs, yet many engineers see prototype development as a complex and tedious task," said Andy Haines, vice president of marketing for Synplicity. "By automating time-consuming tasks and offering customers easy access to many standard off-the-shelf hardware solutions, we've taken the unnecessary complexity out of ASIC prototyping to enable verification in the early stages of design. Using this product, we believe engineers who are not experts in prototyping or who are not familiar with the design that is being prototyped, will be able to quickly build a prototype for verifying an ASIC with very little effort."

Rich Sevcik, senior vice president of FPGA products at Xilinx, Inc., said, "For more than two years, Synplicity's Certify product has provided our customers with best-in-class prototyping and debug technology. Now, with its enhanced Quick Partitioning Technology and Certify pin-multiplier support, only Synplicity offers designers an automated flow for prototyping an ASIC design using an off-the-shelf FPGA board. We believe this innovative solution will open FPGA-based prototyping to a broader range of designers seeking solutions for their verification problems."

Automated Features for Off-the-Shelf Boards Ease Prototype Development

Now available for off-the-shelf boards, Synplicity's Quick Partitioning Technology (QPT) automates one of the most time-consuming processes in prototyping -- partitioning. First introduced in version 5.0 of the Certify software, Synplicity has enhanced QPT to understand board trace connections as well as FPGA area and I/Os. With these enhancements, the software can automatically divide a design according to pre-defined board specifications, eliminating board development costs and reducing time to market, making it easy to obtain the benefits of prototyping.

The Certify pin-multiplier feature allows a designer to use one I/O pin to transmit multiple signals between devices in order to conserve pins. Despite the increasing number of pins available per FPGA device, most ASIC designs are difficult to partition because the I/O interconnect between modules can run in the thousands, preventing the design from fitting into even the largest FPGAs. Using the newly automated CPM feature, a designer can successfully multiplex the I/O resources with little knowledge of the target FPGA architecture -- simply compile the design and run QPT. If a design cannot fit the target device, the designer can use the Certify software to try a larger board or select an I/O multiplexing ratio and automatically insert all the necessary logic and connections to map the design to the target device.

Philips Semiconductors has used the Certify software for nearly three years. Rolf Singer, development manager at Philips Semiconductors, said, "Prototyping with Synplicity's Certify product is an important step in our development methodology because it enables us to verify performance and functionality quickly and easily. We used the Certify software in a combined emulation and prototyping project. The Certify software is very stable, easy to learn and easy to use. Synplicity's prototyping solution enabled us to set up an almost push button flow and has given us a lot of flexibility for a relatively small investment."

Off-the-Shelf Board Partners and Resources

Incorporating RTL functional prototyping into the ASIC design flow offers designers substantial time to market advantages and enables early system software debugging. The availability of pre-defined, interoperable solutions reduces the risk of incorporating this FPGA-based prototyping methodology into an existing design flow. Synplicity established the Partners in Prototyping (PIP) program to identify and qualify a design methodology between the Certify software and complementary hardware, software and design services used in RTL functional prototyping.

With today's announcement, Synplicity has updated its Partners in Prototyping program to deliver information, links to standard board providers, and software files for standard, off-the-shelf boards both within the Certify tool and through the PIP Web site. In fact, the new Certify software includes an enhanced Board Wizard that enables Certify software designers to link to Synplicity's Web site directly from the software for additional help and information.

Synplicity named new off-the-shelf board and design services Partners in Prototyping including: The Dini Group (http://www.dinigroup.com), Gidel (http://www.gidel.com), Hardi Electronics (http://www.hardi.se) and Nallatech (http://www.nallatech.com). PIP companies work closely with Synplicity to verify interoperability between its own products and the Certify tool in order to develop a smooth flow for ASIC designers, system designers and IP developers. Documentation, technical information and software files are available on Synplicity's PIP Web site, allowing ASIC designers to visit a single destination for their prototyping needs. Designers can also use the Web site to quickly evaluate whether an off-the-shelf board exists to meet their specific design requirements by downloading board descriptions (.vb files) from the site.

For more information on Synplicity's Partners in Prototyping program, please visit http://www.synplicity.com/programs/prototyping/.

Pricing and Availability

The Certify 6.0 software will be available in March 2002 for $115,000 for Windows NT, Windows 2000 and UNIX (Solaris & HP) operating systems. Current Certify customers on maintenance will be upgraded at no additional cost.

About the Certify Software

First introduced in May 1999, the Certify software is the industry's first registered transfer level (RTL) prototyping solution that enables designers to create functional hardware prototypes of their ASIC design at the RTL, prior to ASIC synthesis. Verification at this early stage of design results in a dramatic increase in productivity and enables faster time to market especially for the one-million-gate-plus ASIC/SoC designs used for multimedia and communications applications. Synplicity believes that prototypes defined by the Certify product will enable extensive verification allowing ASIC designers to perform the following tasks at- or near-system speed: hardware/software co-verification; algorithm development and verification; verification of intellectual property, either cores or library elements; system software development and debugging, verification of system-level protocol compatibility and early system/product development with FPGAs. Today, the Certify software is being used by dozens of designers to solve their ASIC verification needs.

About Synplicity

Synplicity, Inc. (Nasdaq:SYNP - news) is a leading provider of software products that enable the rapid and effective design and verification of semiconductors used in networking and communications, computer and peripheral, consumer and military/aerospace electronics systems. Recognizing the company's industry-leading position, Dataquest named Synplicity as the #1 provider of PLD synthesis tools in 2000 with 45 percent market share. Synplicity leverages its innovative logic synthesis, physical synthesis and verification software solutions to improve performance and shorten development time for complex programmable logic devices, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and system-on-chip (SoC) integrated circuits. The company's fast, easy-to-use products offer high quality of results, support industry-standard design languages (VHDL and Verilog) and run on popular platforms. As of December 31, 2001, Synplicity employed 266 people in its 20 facilities worldwide. Synplicity is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information on Synplicity, visit http://www.synplicity.com.

The specific features, functionality and release timing of any new products or new versions of current products remain at the sole discretion of Synplicity, Inc., and Synplicity does not make any warranty as to when or if specific features, functionality or releases may occur.

Synplicity and Certify are registered trademarks of Synplicity, Inc. All other brands or products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their owners.

Synplicity's Partners in Prototyping Deliver Standard Prototyping Solutions

Nallatech, Allan Cantle, President and CEO

"The Certify software, with its powerful partitioning capability, allows systems designers to target our DIME(TM) architectures very effectively. For example, our Benblue, Benera, and Benfad Virtex-II products offer Certify software customers a defined methodology for debugging their prototyping systems, as well as accelerating hardware verification. By combining Nallatech's expertise in reconfigurable computers with the Certify-based RTL prototyping methodology, ASIC designers and FPGA-centric systems developers can now deliver faster solutions to achieve that vital competitive edge."

Gidel, Reuven Weintraub, President

"The powerful combination of Synplicity's Certify software and Gidel's PROC boards offers great value for development, prototyping and emulation. Gidel's highly flexible multi-FPGA PROC boards have been created to provide ultra high-performance and flexible platforms for ASIC providers, OEMs and system developers, as well as intellectual property providers. All over the world, developers who use Synplicity's Certify prototyping software with our PROC solutions enjoy a friendly straight forward solution that utilizes an innovative automatic integration and saves valuable time, allowing them to focus on meeting their design specs and time-to-market demands. Using Synplicity's advanced and easy to use Certify software holds the key to a smooth, time-saving development process."

HARDI Electronics AB, Lars-Eric Lundgren, co-founder and managing director

"HARDI ASIC Prototyping System is a modular board system aimed at making ASIC prototypes in a fast and efficient way. The system is composed of a pre-made, multi-FPGA board and one or more standard or custom-made daughter boards. It's developed to work in conjunction with the Certify software, the powerful ASIC prototyping software from Synplicity."

The Dini Group, Mike Dini, President

"The Dini Group's standard prototyping boards, such as our DN2000K10 and the DN3000K10, have been used with success by Certify customers around the world. With automatic Quick Partitioning Technology and Certify pin-multiplier support for these boards, Synplicity is once again demonstrating its commitment to offering solutions that remove the guesswork from the prototype development process."

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