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For Immediate Release
Synplicity's DSP Synthesis Platform Achieves
Significant Growth in 2006
True DSP Synthesis Methodology and Close Vendor
Partnerships Drive Adoption; New Wireless IP Now Available
SUNNYVALE, Calif., January 24, 2007 — Synplicity, Inc. (Nasdaq:
SYNP), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification
of semiconductors, today announced that adoption of its ESL platform,
Synplify® DSP synthesis solution, more than doubled (in number
of seats sold) during 2006, with particularly strong adoption in
the industrial and military/aerospace markets. Synplicity attributes
this growth to its unique true DSP synthesis methodology, the continuing
development of the Synplify® DSP synthesis optimization engine
and availability of additional IP to support functions commonly
used in industrial and military/aerospace applications. Also critical
to its success in these markets is Synplicity’s close partnerships
with leading FPGA vendors such as Actel, Altera and Xilinx.
“Synplicity’s unique approach to DSP synthesis is compelling
when you compare its methodology to language-based flows or other
tools that generate RTL,” said Chris Ciufo, group editorial
director for Military Embedded Systems magazine and DSP-FPGA.com.
“ESL is becoming increasingly important in complex system
designs. With Synplicity’s approach to ESL synthesis, the
company is making it much easier for hardware engineers to incorporate
DSP algorithms into their hardware of choice.”
The Synplify DSP solution is in use across multiple market segments
including communications, semiconductor, consumer, and military/aerospace
- including the top three defense contractors worldwide. The Synplify
DSP software addresses the productivity and performance needs of
military/aerospace designers by providing a fully automated solution
that quickly delivers highly optimized RTL. With the adoption of
Synplicity’s true DSP synthesis methodology, defense manufacturers
have experienced improved designer productivity and achieved higher
performing silicon results.
“The Synplify DSP product helped us dramatically in both
area and performance,” said Michael Adamson, principal design
engineer, Pentland Systems. “When we first evaluated it against
our previous DSP implementation tool, we found that the Synplify
DSP software saved 25 percent on area. The performance was even
more dramatic, a 75 percent increase. A big reason for these improvements
is that the Synplify DSP software gives us the opportunity to optimize
the RTL at the compile stage and perform retiming, which is not
possible with other products.”
Paul Beard, senior systems engineer at L-3 Communications, SSG-Tinsley,
Inc., also stated, “We found the Synplify DSP tool very easy
to learn and use, and quickly realized how ideal it is for our purposes.
We can design at the straightforward block diagram level in the
Simulink environment, run simulations to verify that it’s
doing what we want, and generate human-readable code that’s
easy to understand and change – even by someone other than
the original author. We found the code generated by the Synplify
DSP software usually works better than hand-written code, and that
if there are any bugs they’re orders of magnitude easier to
find and fix.”
Synplicity’s Close Collaboration with FPGA Vendors
Synplicity works closely with its FPGA partners to provide mutual
customers with a well-integrated DSP solution. Actel provides direct
access to the Synplify DSP software within the Actel Libero®
Integrated Design Environment (IDE), based on an OEM arrangement
announced in May 2006 by both companies. Altera customers can use
Altera’s PLDs combined with the Synplify DSP software to enable
mutual customers to achieve optimal results for their FPGA, or FPGA-based
prototyping projects. Xilinx has worked with Synplicity to develop
an integrated and seamless flow whereby DSP designers can use both
the Synplify DSP software and Xilinx System Generator to create
optimized DSP designs.
"As the leading supplier of radiation-tolerant FPGAs, Actel
understands the stringent design, performance and reliability requirements
associated with military and aerospace applications," said
Rich Brossart, vice president, product marketing at Actel. “To
increase performance and usability for these customers, we’ve
added the Synplify DSP AE software to our Libero IDE Platinum toolkit,
offering military and aerospace designers a tremendous value. We
will continue to work closely with Synplicity to increase tool interoperability
and maximize ease of use within the design flow.”
“The Synplify DSP software accelerates the process of implementing
DSP algorithms into our Stratix III FPGAs,” said Jim Smith,
director of EDA Relations, Altera Corporation. “Synplicity’s
true DSP synthesis methodology fully leverages all the features
of Stratix III FPGAs that will enable our mutual customers to easily
map any IP developed in Synplify DSP software into Stratix III hardware.
In addition to delivering the industry’s lowest power consumption
of any high-density FPGA, we believe the Stratix III family has
the most flexible FPGA architecture for DSPs, and our joint development
efforts with Synplicity will be a significant factor driving the
adoption of our devices.”
“We share Synplicity’s goal of ensuring the process
of embedding DSP functionality into FPGAs is as seamless as possible,”
said Tom Feist, embedded and signal processing solutions marketing
director at Xilinx. “With the Synplify DSP software’s
new integration into Xilinx System Generator for DSP, our mutual
DSP customers can take advantage of the combined tool flow providing
users of the Synplify DSP software access to the Xilinx hardware
co-simulation and co-processing environments, enabling a seamless
link to the Xilinx MicroBlaze embedded processor.”
New Wireless IP and Enhancements in the Latest Version
of the Synplify DSP Software
The latest release of the Synplify DSP software, v3.2, adds several
IP blocks that are fundamental to wireless communications algorithms.
These include blocks for building adaptive filtering applications
and a Viterbi decoder for error correction. They are well integrated
into the Simulink/Synplify DSP library giving users the flexibility
and extensibility of features like vector signals and fixed-point
datatype propagation. The new IP blocks make design capture faster
and much more concise for developers working with WiMAX, 802.11,
and other OFDM-based wireless standards. With the Synplify DSP synthesis
engine, designs using these blocks can be optimized for speed or
area for target devices from Actel, Altera and Xilinx, thus allowing
highly portable wireless IP to be developed rapidly with excellent
results.
About Synplicity’s True DSP Synthesis Solution
The Synplify DSP software accelerates DSP algorithm implementation
using technology-independent modeling and an industry leading true
DSP synthesis engine that creates optimal implementations from a
single model. DSP hardware engineers can quickly capture and verify
complex DSP algorithms, target various FPGA device technologies,
and then rapidly explore performance, area and multi-channelized
optimizations based on user-specified constraints. This methodology
achieves up to 10X productivity over traditional design flows, and
also enables full design portability and faster, more comprehensive
design-space exploration.
About Synplicity
Synplicity, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP) is a leading supplier of innovative
software solutions that enable the rapid and effective design of
Programmable Logic Devices (FPGAs, PLDs and CPLDs) and are used
in a wide range of communications, military/aerospace, consumer,
semiconductor, computer, and other electronic systems markets. Synplicity’s
tools provide outstanding performance, cost and time-to-market benefits
by simplifying, improving and automating key design planning, logic
synthesis, physical synthesis and verification functions for FPGA,
FPGA-based ASIC prototyping and DSP designers. Synplicity is the
number one supplier of FPGA synthesis solutions and has been rated
#1 in customer satisfaction by FPGA designers since 2004 through
the EE Times’ Annual FPGA EDA Branding Survey. Synplicity
products support industry-standard design languages (VHDL and Verilog)
and run on popular platforms. The company operates in over 20 facilities
worldwide and 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, achievements
and benefits of the Synplify DSP software. In some cases, you will
be able to identify forward-looking statements by terminology such
as “may,” “will,” “should,”
“expects,” “can,” “believes”
or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology.
These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown
risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual
results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements,
including the performance and benefits of Synplicity’s software
relative to relevant industry methods, standards, design flaws,
design difficulties or other problems with the Synplify DSP software,
and the growth and changing technical requirements in the FPGA market.
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, 2005 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.
###
Synplicity and Synplify are registered trademarks of Synplicity
Inc. All other names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered
trademarks of their owners.
PR Contact:
Steve Gabriel
Porter Novelli
408-369-4627
steve.gabriel@porternovelli.com
Reader Contact:
John Gallagher
Synplicity Inc.
408-215-6000
johng@synplicity.com
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