Synplicity's Industry-Leading FPGA Synthesis Product Adds Support for Altera's New Stratix II FPGAs

Amplify Software Now Extracts Physical Hierarchy To Guide Design Planning

DATE CONFERENCE, PARIS — February 17, 2004 — Synplicity Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification of semiconductors, today announced it has enhanced its Amplify® FPGA physical synthesis and Synplify Pro® FPGA synthesis software to include new support for Altera® and Xilinx devices. With this new version, the Synplify Pro software offers new features to support the recently announced Stratix™ II family of FPGAs from Altera. Enhancements to Synplicity’s Amplify FPGA physical synthesis software include support for a hierarchical timing report, enabling faster timing closure, and support for the low-cost Spartan 3 family of FPGAs from Xilinx. With the latest versions of the Amplify 3.5 and Synplify Pro 7.5 software, Synplicity continues its efforts to deliver best-in-class performance for FPGA designers.

The latest version of the Synplify software includes an auto-constraint feature, providing significant savings in design time and a further advantage in timing performance. This unique automatic constraint feature within the Synplify Pro software automatically tightens timing constraints until a maximum clock frequency is achieved. This is done incrementally without the need to completely re-run synthesis, providing an automated way to boost timing performance of the design. The auto-constraint feature typically gets within five percent of what handcrafted constraints can achieve, while eliminating the days or weeks designers often spend creating and modifying their constraints.

“We are committed to maintaining our leadership position in FPGA synthesis and believe we have extended our lead in both timing performance and area/cost reduction with this new release,” said Jeff Garrison, director of marketing, Synplicity. “Altera’s Stratix II FPGAs are an impressive new family of devices that we believe will open up new types of applications for programmable logic. The Stratix II family is built upon a new and innovative FPGA architecture and we have worked with Altera for over a year to provide excellent timing and area optimizations for our mutual customers upon its release.”

Synplicity’s Amplify FPGA software is the only true physical synthesis tool for FPGAs. Other tools perform physical re-optimizations based upon initial place and route, but only the Amplify software performs simultaneous detailed placement and physical optimizations all the way from RTL through placed gates, resulting in higher-level optimizations and improved timing closure. In the latest version of the Amplify software, Synplicity extracts a design’s physical hierarchy and reports it through a hierarchical “island” timing report. The island-based timing report enables faster timing closure by providing users with detailed guidance in order to make it easier to understand what portion of a design should be floorplanned. This timing report is also useful when creating physical constraints by identifying which instances belong to multiple critical paths and how the critical paths are connected together.

The Synplify 7.5 software delivers enhanced support for the Verilog2001 standard, including multi-dimensional array support. This new support enables designers to describe their functionality more efficiently, significantly reducing pages of HDL code. The Synplify Pro software also includes a new error messaging system that enhances productivity by making it easier for users to filter messages created by the Synplify® software and view the messages by category. For instance, the new system filters for warnings and errors so that users can see only new or selected types of errors and warnings during HDL compilation.

Pricing and Availability
The Amplify 3.5, Synplify 7.5 and Synplify Pro 7.5 software are available now. Pricing for the Amplify software starts at $29,000 (U.S.). Pricing for the Synplify software starts at $9,500 (U.S.) and pricing for Synplify Pro software starts at $20,000 (U.S.). For more information, contact Synplicity at http://www.synplicity.com.

About Synplicity
Synplicity Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP) is a leading supplier of innovative synthesis, verification, and physical implementation software solutions that enable the rapid and effective design and verification of semiconductors. Synplicity’s high-quality, high-performance tools significantly reduce costs and time-to-market for FPGA, Structured/Platform ASIC and cell-based/COT ASIC designers. The company’s underlying Behavior Extracting Synthesis Technology® (BEST™), which is embedded in its logical, physical, and verification tools and has led to Synplicity’s top position in FPGA synthesis, now provides the same breakthrough runtimes and quality of results to ASIC and COT customers. The company’s fast, easy-to-use products support industry standard design languages (VHDL and Verilog) and run on popular platforms. Synplicity employs over 270 people in its 20 facilities worldwide. Synplicity is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information visit http://www.synplicity.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, statements regarding the performance of Synplicity’s Amplify 3.5, Synplify 7.5 and Synplify Pro 7.5 software, both individually and used in conjunction with devices from Altera and Xilinx, as applicable, and Synplicity’s leadership position in FPGA synthesis. These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Synplicity’s position in the FPGA market and the performance or achievements of Synplicity’s Amplify 3.5, Synplify 7.5 and Synplify Pro 7.5 to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. In some cases, you will be able to identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “believes” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Such market position, performance or achievements could differ materially due to a number of factors, including the performance and quality of our software products relative to other logic synthesis products for FPGAs, the acceptance of our software products by existing and new customers and the growth and changing technical requirements in the programmable semiconductor market, particularly with respect to FPGAs. For additional information and considerations regarding the risks faced by Synplicity, see its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2002 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as other periodic reports filed with the SEC from time to time, including its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Although Synplicity believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, Synplicity cannot guarantee the future performance or achievements of its software. In addition, neither Synplicity nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these forward-looking statements. Synplicity disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement.

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Synplicity, Amplify, Behavior Extracting Synthesis Technology, Synplify and Synplify Pro are registered trademarks of Synplicity, Inc. BEST is a trademark of Synplicity Inc. All other brands or products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Reader Contact:
Jeff Garrison
Synplicity, Inc.
408/215-6000
jeff@synplicity.com

Press Contact:
Steve Gabriel
Porter Novelli
408/369-1500
steve.gabriel@porternovelli.com