Synplicity Expands University Program to Include Amplify Physical Optimizer and Certify Software Solution

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 3, 2003 — Synplicity, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYNP), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification of semiconductors, today announced it has expanded its university program product offering to include the Amplify® Physical Optimizer™ and Certify® ASIC RTL prototyping software. Synplicity first established its university program in 1996 to provide its Synplify® synthesis solutions to universities worldwide for teaching and academic research purposes. Today, Synplicity’s synthesis tools and related course materials have been provided to more than 325 colleges and universities worldwide, including 15 of the top 25 U.S. engineering schools as determined by the annual survey of the best undergraduate engineering programs in U.S. News & World Report. Additionally, leading universities in India, Japan and Taiwan and throughout Europe have also added Synplicity’s solutions into their academic programs.

“Rapidly increasing device densities, design complexities and time-to-market pressures are constantly challenging design engineers. To prepare students for these challenges, instructors must have access to the latest software tools,” said Jonathan Rose, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada. “The Synplicity University Program provides universities worldwide with easy-to-use, state-of-the-art commercial development software. Tomorrow's designers will be able to gain valuable experience with the latest methods and technology.”

“Since the program’s introduction, Synplicity has been committed to training future engineers by providing them with state-of-the-art EDA solutions. The success of the university program with our Synplify Pro® synthesis software prompted us to expand the program to include both the Amplify and Certify software products,” said Bernie Aronson, president and chief executive officer at Synplicity. “We believe the easy-to-use yet powerful Synplify Pro, Amplify and Certify tools will play an integral role in training engineering students in the use of advanced synthesis products. Hands-on knowledge of this technology will help students become more productive and valuable contributors to the global electronics industry.”

Through its university program, Synplicity provides colleges and universities with low-cost, full-featured versions of its FPGA synthesis and ASIC verification products, as well as training materials and textbooks that can be used within course curriculum. Currently, more than 2300 active seats of Synplicity’s Synplify software are at universities worldwide. Synplicity and Aldec, Inc., also offer a synthesis and simulation bundle featuring their respective Synplify Pro and Active-HDL products. For more information, please contact Synplicity or visit http://www.synplicity.com.

About Synplicity’s Products
Synplicity’s Synplify software helps programmable logic designers rapidly achieve aggressive performance objectives. The Synplify software takes designs written in VHDL or Verilog as input, and compiles, optimizes and maps them into efficient, high-performance netlists for all leading CPLD and FPGA devices. The Synplify Pro software offers high quality of results and fast runtimes along with an expanded feature set optimized to increase performance and productivity for today’s complex programmable devices.

The Amplify Physical Optimizer software is the first physical synthesis tool for FPGAs. The Amplify software improves circuit performance and timing closure and accelerates productivity by performing simultaneous placement and logic optimization during the synthesis process. The Amplify Physical Optimizer product, now in its second generation, has been used in hundreds of Altera and Xilinx programmable logic designs around the world.

The Certify software is believed to be the industry’s first register transfer level (RTL) prototyping solution that enables designers to create functional hardware prototypes of their ASIC design at the RTL, prior to ASIC synthesis. 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.

About Synplicity
Synplicity, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP) 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, since the year 2000 Dataquest has named Synplicity as the #1 provider of PLD synthesis tools, announcing a 54 percent market share in 2001. 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, 2002, Synplicity employed over 250 people in its 20 facilities worldwide. Synplicity is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information on Synplicity, visit http://www.synplicity.com.

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Synplicity, Synplify, Synplify Pro, Amplify and Certify are registered trademarks of Synplicity Inc. Physical Optimizer is a trademark of Synplicity. All other brands or products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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