Synopsys, Inc.
Corporate Backgrounder - Summer 2013
Synopsys Overview & History
Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS) provides products and services that accelerate innovation in the global electronics market. As a leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor intellectual property (IP), Synopsys’ comprehensive, integrated portfolio of
system-level,
IP,
implementation,
verification,
manufacturing,
optical and
field-programmable gate array (FPGA) solutions help address the key challenges designers face such as power and yield management, system-to-silicon verification and time-to-results. These technology-leading solutions help give Synopsys customers a competitive edge in quickly bringing the best products to market while reducing costs and schedule risk.
Founded in 1986 by Dr. Aart de Geus and a team of engineers from General Electric’s Microelectronics Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Synopsys was first established as “Optimal Solutions” with a charter to develop and market ground-breaking synthesis technology developed by the team at General Electric. The company pioneered the commercial application of logic synthesis that has since been adopted by every major semiconductor design company in the world. This technology provided an exponential leap in integrated circuit (IC) design productivity by allowing engineers to specify chip functionality at a higher level of abstraction. Without this technology, the complex designs of today would not be possible.
For more than 25 years, Synopsys has been at the heart of accelerating electronics innovation with engineers around the world having used Synopsys technology to successfully design and create billions of chips and systems.
| Company Founded: | 1986 | | Revenue Q2 FY 2013: | $499.3 million* | | Revenue for FY 2012: | $ 1.76 billion** | | Employees for Q1 FY 2013: | Approximately 8,195*** | | Headquarters: | 700 East Middlefield Rd.
Mountain View, California 94043-4033
U.S.A. | | Locations: | Approximately 90 sales, support and R&D offices worldwide in North America, Europe, Japan, the Pacific Rim, India and Israel | | Contact: | (650)584-5000
www.synopsys.com |
|
* 15% growth over second quarter of Fiscal 2012
** Fiscal Year 2012 (ended November 2, 2012) - 14% growth over Fiscal 2011
*** Total employees worldwide as reported for second quarter Fiscal 2013
Financial Information
Synopsys stock has traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the symbol “SNPS” since the company’s initial public offering in 1992. Recent Fiscal results are as follows:
- Revenue Q2 Fiscal 2013: $499.3 million – 15% growth over second quarter Fiscal 2012
- Revenue Fiscal 2012: $1.76 billion – 14% growth over Fiscal 2011
- Fiscal 2012 Non-GAAP Earnings per Share: $2.10 – 17% growth over Fiscal 2011
Figure 1: Synopsys Yearly Revenue, 2005-2013. Synopsys Fiscal Year 2013 revenue shows mid-range guidance. Management Team
The company’s executive management team is comprised of leaders with diverse global backgrounds and many decades of combined semiconductor industry experience. The tremendous “know how” they bring to Synopsys has helped the company become its industry leader.
- Dr. Aart J. de Geus, Chairman & co-CEO
- Dr. Chi-Foon Chan, President & co-CEO
- Brian Beattie, Chief Financial Officer
- Brian Cabrera, Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary
- John Chilton, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Strategic Development
- Jan Collinson, Senior Vice President, Human Resources & Facilities
- Dr. Antun Domic, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Implementation Group
- Manoj Gandhi, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Verification Group
- Deirdre Hanford, Senior Vice President, Global Technical Services
- Dr. Howard Ko, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Silicon Engineering Group
- Joachim Kunkel, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Solutions Group
- Dr. Paul Lo, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Analog Mixed Signal Group
- Joe Logan, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Market Overview
Technical innovation is increasingly touching everyone, everything, everywhere. As the demand for ever faster, lighter, smarter and cheaper electronics continues to skyrocket, the global semiconductor design community must identify and successfully adopt new strategies to solve the increasingly complex technical and economic challenges. Today’s designers face tremendous pressure to develop “cool” differentiated products more quickly and cost effectively than ever before. Companies that innovate quickly thrive while those that do not wither. Synopsys is helping companies accelerate innovation in all aspects of semiconductor design. Below are three key trends that Synopsys is helping the global design community address.
 | Design Complexity:
Dealing with design complexity remains the number one problem that engineers face. Lithography – non-planar CMOS and double patterning may be the new problem for those rushing to 20-nanometer (nm) and beyond, while 2.5 and 3D-IC integration may be the new problem for those striving to differentiate themselves above and beyond the pure technology node. All applications demand ever-increasing power efficiency, and the convergence between design steps which until recently were separated by watertight compartments, now requires design tools, flows, and methodologies to be re-architected. |
|
 | Hardware/Software Relationship:
The massive amount of software development needed across many domains is fundamentally changing the semiconductor industry. Now, instead of making software to support new hardware, we are increasingly shifting to a perspective of making new hardware to support the software. The implications of this extend from analog to digital interactions and from system to silicon design and verification challenges as engineers struggle to differentiate their products in a rapidly evolving ecosystem. |
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 | Exponentials
Talented designers are forever pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and the electronic content in the everyday devices that we all rely upon continues to exponentially skyrocket. This exponential increase in electronic content carries through everything from the number of transistors on a chip to the amount of electronics in today’s cars and it leads to an exponential increase in the amount of data that is created, transported, manipulated and stored. Exponentials are driving the need to raise the level of abstraction and model everything, which requires greater collaboration in an increasingly complex and important ecosystem. More than ever, success is dependent on collaboration at every step. |
Synopsys’ full suite of best-in-class solutions enables designers to accelerate the creation and verification of complex integrated circuits (IC) and system-on-chip (SoC) designs from concept to silicon. Synopsys provides a complete front-to-back design and test environment, software-level to silicon-level verification, design reuse technology (IP), field-programmable gate array (FPGA) solutions and professional services to help its customers get their silicon working quickly and accurately. Synopsys leads the way in offering technology that creates a bridge between design and manufacturing to improve yield and increase predictability. Synopsys also develops and supports products for the design and analysis of high-performance, cost-effective optical systems. Synopsys' products help customers accelerate their innovation by improving their designs in virtually every metric, including performance, complexity, silicon area, cost, power consumption and time-to-market.
Synopsys products span the entire design flow, allowing customers to use integrated best-in-class technology from design specification to silicon fabrication. Synopsys develops and supports products in numerous areas in order to provide customers with an integrated solution for advanced semiconductor design, verification and manufacturing: Galaxy™ Design Platform, Discovery™ Verification Platform, and FPGA-Based Prototyping hardware-based verification, design-for-manufacturing, TCAD, DesignWare® Intellectual Property (IP), FPGA implementation solutions and System-level Design solutions. Synopsys also develops and supports products for the design and analysis of high-performance, cost-effective optical systems, with CODE V® for imaging applications, and LightTools® for illumination applications.
A complete list of Synopsys solutions includes:
- System-Level Design
- System-Level Design & Models
- System Verification & Analysis
- Custom Processor Development
- Embedded Software Development
- Architecture Design
- Virtual Prototyping
- Algorithm Design & Analysis
- High-Level Synthesis
- FPGA-Based Prototyping
- Verification
- Design for Verification
- Final Verification
- Functional Verification
- Transaction-Based Acceleration
- Debug & Analysis
- Formal Analysis
- Emulation
- Verification IP
- AMS Verification
- IP
- Interface IP
- Analog IP
- Processor Cores
- Embedded Memories & Logic Libraries
- SoC Infrastructure IP
- IP Subsystems
| - Implementation
- RTL Exploration
- RTL Synthesis
- FPGA Design
- Power Optimization
- Design for Test & ATPG
- Formal Equivalence Checking
- Floorplanning
- Place & Route
- Custom Implementation
- In-Design Physical Verification
- In-Design Rail Analysis
- Static Timing Analysis
- Parasitics Extraction
- DRC / LVS Physical Verification Signoff
- SPICE Modeling & Simulation
- 3D Extraction
- 3D-IC Support
- Manufacturing
- Fabrication & Packaging
- Technology CAD
- Mask Synthesis & Data Prep
- Manufacturing Yield Management
- Lithography Verification
- Design for Manufacturing
- Yield Optimization
- Imaging Optics Design & Analysis
- Illumination Optics Design & Analysis
- Optical Engineering Consulting Services
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Professional Services
Synopsys' services organization delivers a portfolio of consulting and design services to help chip developers accelerate innovation and achieve success in their design programs. These services are tightly aligned with our EDA, IP, FPGA and optical products to advance customers’ learning curves and help them develop and deploy advanced methodologies that improve their productivity and design results. Our worldwide team of design consultants complements our customers’ core competencies to mitigate their project risks and accelerate the implementation of their chips.
Recent Acquisitions
Throughout its history, Synopsys has complemented and accelerated its technology leadership through strategic acquisitions.
On December 2, 2012, Synopsys completed the acquisition of SpringSoft (TAIEX:2473), a global supplier of specialized IC design software headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The acquisition increases Synopsys' investment in Taiwan by growing local engineering expertise, technology development capabilities and customer support. The combination of SpringSoft's and Synopsys' technology portfolios will help accelerate delivery of a unified, powerful SoC debug platform, and a higher level of automation in custom implementation tools to customers.
On October 4, 2012, Synopsys acquired EVE, a leading supplier of emulation platforms for SoC verification. Emulation is a rapidly growing solution in the spectrum of technologies used to verify today's highly complex systems-on-chips (SoCs). Integrating EVE's technology with Synopsys' best-in-class platform of simulation, debug, verification IP (VIP), coverage, static verification, low power verification, FPGA prototyping and virtual prototyping solutions will give Synopsys customers access to the broadest verification offering in the industry.
Standards and Interoperability
Synopsys is a leader in standards and interoperability. The company demonstrates its leadership and focus on accelerating innovation by actively participating in industry organizations, partnering with customers, semiconductor IP and EDA companies, and making its own technology available through open-source licensing or donation to standards groups. Synopsys works with standards bodies and industry organizations to lay the groundwork for tool and semiconductor IP interoperability throughout the EDA industry.
Through its in-Sync program, Synopsys establishes relationships with other EDA and semiconductor IP vendors to create a smooth, predictable path between Synopsys tools and its in-Sync partners’ products. Synopsys has made significant contributions to and has driven the industry adoption of a number of industry-critical standards via direct contributions to the industry or through standards bodies and industry organizations.
Synopsys was recognized by the IEEE Standards Association with the 2010 Corporate Award for long-term vision, outstanding leadership and volunteer contributions to the IEEE-SA specifically for the development and deployment of EDA standards. For the benefit of our customers, Synopsys is committed to making tool interoperability a reality.
Strategic Alliances and Partnerships
Synopsys has long-established proven strategic alliances with the leading foundry, FPGA and IP suppliers that are dedicated to jointly solving the challenges of system complexity and nanometer scale for leading-edge SoC design. Key alliance partners include:
- Foundry Partners
- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC)
- GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM Corp. and Samsung (The Common Platform)
- FPGA Partners
- Achronix, Altera, Lattice, Microsemi (formerly Actel), Silicon Blue and Xilinx
- IP Partner
- ARM Ltd.
- Imagination Technologies
Synopsys also maintains a broader semiconductor vendor and IP vendor program aimed at enabling our vendor partners to produce the best quality libraries and design flows for mutual customers.
Synopsys Users Group (SNUG)
Established in 1990, SNUG represents a global design community focused on accelerating innovation. As the electronics industry’s largest user conference, SNUG delivers a robust technical program developed by users, for users and includes strong ecosystem partner participation through Design Community Expos in many regions. The 2012 SNUG brought together nearly 9,000 users across North America, Europe, Asia and Japan, and featured nearly 250 customer papers. For information on the SNUG 2013 program, or to view SNUG Silicon Valley keynote presentations, please visit the
SNUG Conference page.
Synopsys University Program
Another way Synopsys demonstrates its commitment to accelerating innovation is through its Worldwide University Program. Synopsys is committed to providing research and academic institutions with access to the tools and technology needed to develop well-educated students who can meet the difficult challenges of IC and SoC design. Prior to entering the workforce, engineering students receive hands-on experience — in the classroom and in graduate-level research programs — with Synopsys’ industry-leading EDA and IP solutions. Synopsys software is currently installed in more than 1600 educational institutions worldwide and reaches thousands of students and professors across the globe every year.
Synopsys Community Affairs
Synopsys Community Affairs embodies the company’s values by implementing worldwide philanthropic strategies that strengthen local communities, encourage employee engagement and inspire a new generation of technology leaders.
On a yearly basis, the Synopsys Foundation provides approximately $1.6 million in grant funding to community organizations with a strong focus on math and science education. Along with this charitable aspect, there is also a hands-on approach to Synopsys’ commitment to education through the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Outreach Foundation. The Synopsys Outreach Foundation promotes interest in math and science at the K-12 grade levels through science fair participation. Since its inception in 1999, more than 1 million students and teachers have participated in the program.
A second facet of Synopsys Community Affairs is the Synopsys Shares program. Through the Synopsys Shares program, employees are empowered to organize volunteer projects and giving campaigns as well as participate in the employee matching gift program, allowing them to have a greater positive impact on the communities where they live and work. Each year, employees are involved in more than 180 activities at offices around the world.