Synopsys is an American
electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
and
software security
Application security (short AppSec) includes all tasks that introduce a secure software development life cycle to development teams. Its final goal is to improve security practices and, through that, to find, fix and preferably prevent security i ...
and quality. Products include tools for
logic synthesis
In computer engineering, logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract specification of desired circuit behavior, typically at register transfer level (RTL), is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates, typically by a com ...
and
physical design of integrated circuits,
simulators for development and
debugging environments that assist in the design of the logic for
chips
''CHiPs'' is an American crime drama television series created by Rick Rosner and originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983. It follows the lives of two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The seri ...
and computer systems. In recent years, Synopsys has expanded its products and services to include
application security
Application security (short AppSec) includes all tasks that introduce a secure software development life cycle to development teams. Its final goal is to improve security practices and, through that, to find, fix and preferably prevent security ...
testing.
Synopsys has gained attention due to its relationship with various Chinese state entities. In 2018, Synopsys formed a partnership with the
People's Liberation Army National Defence University
The People's Liberation Army National Defence University () is a Beijing-based national military university administered by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and funded by the Central Military Commission. The university is the highest milita ...
and, in 2022, the company came under investigation by the
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
for technology transfers to sanctioned entities in China.
History
Synopsys was founded by
Aart J de Geus and David Gregory in 1986 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company was initially established as Optimal Solutions with a charter to develop and market synthesis technology developed by the team at
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
.
In 2022, Synopsys was reported to be under investigation by the
United States Department of Commerce
The United States Department of Commerce is an executive department of the U.S. federal government concerned with creating the conditions for economic growth and opportunity. Among its tasks are gathering economic and demographic data for bus ...
for unlawful technology transfers to sanctioned companies such as
Huawei
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...
's
HiSilicon
HiSilicon () is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong and wholly owned by Huawei. HiSilicon purchases licenses for CPU designs from ARM Holdings, including the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore, ARM Cortex-M3, ARM Cortex-A7 MP ...
and
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a partially state-owned publicly-listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company. (published 05-09-2019) (published 05-24-2019) It is the largest contract chip maker in mainl ...
.
In July 2022, agents from Taiwan's
Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau
The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB; ) is a criminal-investigation and counter-intelligence agency reporting under the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of China (Taiwan). The agency is run by the Director-General which is accoun ...
raided the offices of a Synopsys-backed firm on suspicion of illegally poaching engineers from
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world' ...
.
Mergers and acquisitions
Synopsys has made some silicon and design verification acquisitions.
CoWare
CoWare was a supplier of platform-driven
electronic system-level Electronic system level (ESL) design and verification is an electronic design methodology, focused on higher abstraction level concerns. The term ''Electronic System Level'' or ''ESL Design'' was first defined by Gartner Dataquest, an EDA-industry ...
(ESL) design software and services acquired by Synopsys in February 2010.
Avanti Corporation
Avanti Corporation (styled as "Avant!) was founded when several former
Cadence Design Systems employees bought the startup ArcSys, which was previously merged with Integrated Silicon Solutions (ISS), gaining Avanti its
design rule checking
In electronic design automation, a design rule is a geometric constraint imposed on circuit board, semiconductor device, and integrated circuit (IC) designers to ensure their designs function properly, reliably, and can be produced with acceptab ...
and
layout versus schematic
The Layout Versus Schematic (LVS) is the class of electronic design automation (EDA) verification software that determines whether a particular integrated circuit layout corresponds to the original schematic or circuit diagram of the design.
Bac ...
tool Hercules (including 3D silicon structure modeling), then bought Compass Design Automation, which had fully integrated IC design flow and
ASIC libraries, especially its
place and route
Place and route is a stage in the design of printed circuit boards, integrated circuits, and field-programmable gate arrays. As implied by the name, it is composed of two steps, placement and routing. The first step, placement, involves decidi ...
tool, which Avanti reworked to create Saturn and Apollo II; and it also bought TMA (Technology Modeling Associates) which brought their pioneering
TCAD and Proteus
optical proximity correction
Optical proximity correction (OPC) is a photolithography enhancement technique commonly used to compensate for image errors due to diffraction or process effects. The need for OPC is seen mainly in the making of semiconductor devices and is due to ...
tools. This was, by far, Synopsys' most significant and controversial acquisition. At the time Avanti was the #4 company in the EDA industry, and was struggling with a
major lawsuit from Cadence for software theft. Avanti was merged into Synopsys on June 6, 2002 during the litigation. Synopsys paid Cadence about $265 million more to end all litigation. Soon after the settlement, the
California Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sac ...
upheld the lower court's earlier decision. Synopsys then paid an additional $26.1 million to
Silvaco
Silvaco Group, Inc., develops and markets electronic design automation (EDA) and technology CAD (TCAD) software and semiconductor design IP (SIP). The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and has a global presence with offices ...
to settle two of three Silvaco's suits against
Meta-Software, earlier purchased by Avanti, and its president. The lawsuits were filed in 1995 and inherited by Avanti.
Novas Software
Novas Software was a company founded in 1996 to address debugging of chip designs. Novas was purchased by Taiwan-based EDA company SpringSoft in May 2008. SpringSoft and Novas were acquired by Synopsys in 2012.
Numerical Technologies
Numerical Technologies, Inc. was a San Jose-based
electronic design automation public (
NASDAQ: NMTC) company. The company was primarily known for its intellectual property, software tools and services covering
phase-shifting mask technology. On March 3, 2003, it was acquired by Synopsys.
SpringSoft
SpringSoft is a software company that developed
VLSI
Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...
design and debugging software. The company was founded with a grant from the
Taiwanese National Science Council in February 1996.
In 1997, SpringSoft established Novas Software in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
to market Springsoft's
VLSI
Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...
Debugging software. SpringSoft created a custom layout tool called Laker and a US-based company called Silicon Canvas. In May 2008, SpringSoft purchased Novas Software Silicon Canvas and combined them to form the wholly owned subsidiary SpringSoft USA. SpringSoft employed over 400 people with office locations across the world.
Synopsys announced its acquisition of SpringSoft in 2012.
Synplicity
Synplicity Inc. was a supplier of software for the design of
programmable logic devices
A programmable logic device (PLD) is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike digital logic constructed using discrete logic gates with fixed functions, a PLD has an undefined function at the time of manu ...
(
FPGAs
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...
,
PLDs, and
CPLDs) used for communications, military/aerospace, consumer, semiconductor, computer and other electronic systems. Synplicity's tools provided
logic synthesis
In computer engineering, logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract specification of desired circuit behavior, typically at register transfer level (RTL), is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates, typically by a com ...
, physical synthesis, and
verification
Verify or verification may refer to:
General
* Verification and validation, in engineering or quality management systems, is the act of reviewing, inspecting or testing, in order to establish and document that a product, service or system meets ...
functions for FPGA, FPGA-based
ASIC prototyping, and
DSP
DSP may refer to:
Computing
* Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal
* Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing
* Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...
designers. Synplicity was listed on Nasdaq until it was acquired by Synopsys for $227 million in a transaction finalized May 15, 2008.
ARC International
ARC International PLC was the designer of
ARC (
Argonaut
The Argonauts (; Ancient Greek: ) were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War (around 1300 BC) accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, ''Argo'', n ...
RISC Core) embedded processors, which were widely used in
SoC devices for
IoT, storage, digital home, mobile, and automotive applications. ARC International was acquired by Synopsys in 2010.
Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software was a privately held company focused on automating the process of identifying and creating an inventory of open source code used in software applications, as well as detecting known security vulnerabilities and license compliance issues. Black Duck Software was acquired by Synopsys in December of 2017.
WhiteHat Security
In April 2022, Synopsys announced the acquisition of WhiteHat Security for $330 million.
WhiteHat Security was founded in 2001 and provides application security as well as insights for DevOps teams.
Divisions
Synopsys has three divisions: Silicon Design and Verification, Silicon Intellectual Property, and Software Integrity.
The Silicon Design and Verification division focuses the design and verification of integrated circuits and designing more advanced processes and models for the manufacturing of those chips.
The Silicon Intellectual Property division focuses on intellectual property for
system-on-a-chip
A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...
(SoC) designs.
The Software Integrity division provides products and services for software security and quality control, including software for
DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (''Dev'') and IT operations (''Ops''). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to ...
environments,
application security
Application security (short AppSec) includes all tasks that introduce a secure software development life cycle to development teams. Its final goal is to improve security practices and, through that, to find, fix and preferably prevent security ...
programs,
software testing
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
tools, and tools for
software licensing audits.
Partnerships
In 2018, Synopsys partnered with the
People's Liberation Army National Defence University
The People's Liberation Army National Defence University () is a Beijing-based national military university administered by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and funded by the Central Military Commission. The university is the highest milita ...
to provide
field-programmable gate array design training.
See also
*
List of EDA companies
A list of notable electronic design automation (EDA) companies.
Existing companies Software companies
FPGA companies
Electronics distribution companies
Development communities
Defunct companies
See also
* List of items in the cate ...
*
Comparison of EDA software
This page is a comparison of electronic design automation (EDA) software which is used today to design the near totality of electronic devices. Modern electronic devices are too complex to be designed without the help of a computer. Electronic dev ...
*
List of tools for static code analysis
This is a list of notable tools for static program analysis (program analysis is a synonym for code analysis).
Static code analysis tools
Languages
Ada
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C, C++
*
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* ...
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Security information and event management
Security information and event management (SIEM) is a field within the field of computer security, where software products and services combine security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM). They provide real-time ana ...
*
Dynamic application security testing A dynamic application security testing (DAST) is a non functional testing process where one can assess an application using certain techniques and the end result of such testing process covers security weaknesses and vulnerabilities present in an ap ...
References
External links
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{{Authority control
Electronic design automation companies
Electronics companies of the United States
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies based in Mountain View, California
American companies established in 1986
Electronics companies established in 1986
1986 establishments in North Carolina