New Strategic Relationships Enhance Synplicity's ASIC Synthesis Offering; Fujitsu and Chip Express Support the Synplify ASIC Product

Business Wire, March 4, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

DATE Conference, Booth P02, Level One, La Palais des Congres

Development Relationships with LogicVision and Verplex Ease ASIC

Verification and Test Insertion

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 2002

Synplicity, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification of semiconductors, today announced it has formed new strategic relationships with ASIC and EDA vendors to support its Synplify ASIC(TM) product. With today's announcement, Fujitsu and Chip Express are the newest ASIC vendors to support the Synplify ASIC software. The companies will work with Synplicity to integrate the software into their ASIC design flows. Synplicity also announced it has established an optimized flow between the Synplify ASIC software and verification and test insertion products from Verplex and LogicVision (Nasdaq: LGVN). Also today, Synplicity announced the availability of the "Express Evaluation" kit for the Synplify ASIC software which reduces the amount of time needed to conduct a hands-on evaluation of the tool.

"Over the past 10 months, we have found many partners in the semiconductor and design automation industry who share our goal of improving designer productivity," said Andy Haines, vice president of marketing at Synplicity. "As a testament to the growing popularity of our approach, both Fujitsu and Chip Express have committed design flow support based on requests from their customers who have used the Synplify ASIC software to achieve excellent results. Likewise, we are pleased to team with LogicVision and Verplex to improve interoperability between our respective products. Our new relationships with these leading ASIC and EDA vendors should enhance the capabilities of our Synplify ASIC software and reinforce our commitment to enabling a high productivity ASIC design flow."

ASIC Vendor Support for the Synplify ASIC Software

Fujitsu and Chip Express are the newest ASIC vendors to support the Synplify ASIC product. Other ASIC vendors who have endorsed the Synplify ASIC synthesis software to date include AMI Semiconductor, Lightspeed Semiconductor and Oki Semiconductor.

"Fujitsu is dedicated to improving design productivity for our customers, and based on customer requests we have started working with Synplicity to support the Synplify ASIC tool," said Yoji Hino, general manager, ASIC, Fujitsu Limited. "We look forward to integrating the Synplify ASIC software into our design flow over the next several months."

Doug Bailey, vice president of marketing at Chip Express, added, "We've found the Synplify ASIC software to be very easy to learn and use, and we have been impressed with the quality of results and runtimes we've seen from the software. We can recommend Synplicity's Synplify ASIC product to our customers."

Design Flow Optimizations

Verifying design functionality and incorporating structural test are both critical tasks that must be completed before tape-out of today's highly complex ASIC designs. Through joint development efforts with Verplex and LogicVision, Synplicity intends to facilitate a smooth design flow from synthesis to formal verification and test insertion.

Verplex and Synplicity have worked closely to improve interoperability between their respective formal verification and synthesis tools. Through joint engineering efforts, the companies have established an optimized design flow between the Synplify ASIC software and Conformal Logic Equivalence Checker (LEC), providing designers with a fast, highly integrated solution for verifying designs created by Synplicity's software. According to Haines, Synplicity recommends Verplex's Conformal Logic Equivalence Checker to customers who need to verify designs created by Synplicity(R) synthesis products.

"We share Synplicity's goal of improving design productivity and are pleased to partner to create a highly integrated design flow that addresses the needs of our mutual customers," said Tom Senna, vice president of marketing and business development at Verplex. "Working with Synplicity, we believe we have established a smooth process for designers to verify design functionality and performance."

For the multi-million gate designs that have become commonplace today, much of the tester functionality must be incorporated into the chip to deliver a cost-effective test solution. Synplicity is working with LogicVision to develop a flow that allows Synplicity's customers to correctly implement LogicVision's embedded microtesters into their designs using the Synplify ASIC design environment.

Steve Baird, LogicVision's director of business development, said, "We are collaborating with Synplicity to establish a compatible flow between our products. I believe our joint development efforts will enable our customers to significantly reduce time to market and design costs."

Express Evaluation Kit Improves Productivity

Performing a design tool evaluation can be a time consuming process, often taking months of training and practice with a tool before determining its appropriateness for meeting design goals. Synplicity's new Synplify ASIC "Express Evaluation" toolkit enables a designer to complete a four-step evaluation, including installation and training, within a day. The kit provides all of the basic information needed to conduct a hands-on evaluation of the Synplify ASIC software including: an evaluation copy of the software; a design tutorial; a test case design; and all of the necessary design libraries. The kit is available at http://www.synplicity.com.