Synopsys, Inc. (Synopsys) delivers trusted and comprehensive silicon to systems design solutions, from electronic design automation (EDA), including system verification and validation solutions, to silicon intellectual property (IP).
The company partners with semiconductor and systems customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their engineering and research and development capacity. The company is catalyzing the era of pervasive intelligence, powering innovation today that ignites...
Synopsys, Inc. (Synopsys) delivers trusted and comprehensive silicon to systems design solutions, from electronic design automation (EDA), including system verification and validation solutions, to silicon intellectual property (IP).
The company partners with semiconductor and systems customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their engineering and research and development capacity. The company is catalyzing the era of pervasive intelligence, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow.
The company is a global leader in supplying the mission-critical EDA software that engineers use to design and test integrated circuits (ICs), also known as chips or silicon, and the company is pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) driven chip design across the full-stack EDA suite to improve efficiency and accelerate the design, verification testing and manufacturing of advanced digital and analog chips. The company provides software and hardware used to validate the electronic systems that incorporate chips and the software that runs on them, including cloud-based digital design flow to boost chip-design development productivity. The company also provides technical services and support to help the company’s customers develop advanced chips and electronic systems. These products and services are part of the company’s Design Automation segment.
The company also offers a broad and comprehensive portfolio of semiconductor IP solutions, which are pre-designed circuits that engineers use as components of larger chip designs to reduce integration risk and speed time to market. The company’s high quality, silicon-proven semiconductor IP includes logic libraries, embedded memories, analog IP, wired and wireless interface IP, security IP, embedded processors and subsystems. To accelerate IP integration and silicon bring-up, the company’s IP Accelerated initiative provides architecture design expertise, hardening, and signal and power integrity analysis. These products and services are part of the company’s Design IP segment.
Products and Services
Design Automation Segment
The company’s Design Automation segment includes the EDA and Other revenue groups.
EDA
Designing ICs involves many complex steps, including among others architecture definition, register transfer level (RTL) design, functional/RTL verification, logic design or synthesis, gate-level verification, floorplanning, place and route, and physical verification. Designers use the company’s EDA products to accelerate and automate the chip design process, reduce errors and enable more powerful and robust designs, with improved productivity for faster time to market.
As the availability and amount of cloud-based data storage grows, customer interest in accessing EDA on the cloud is also increasing as customers seek to benefit from the scalability and flexibility that cloud computing can offer to their flows and engineering teams. While many of the company’s solutions have been used in cloud-based environments, such as in a customer’s own server and/or cloud environment, in 2022 the company launched a Synopsys Cloud offering that provides customers additional options for accessing the company’s EDA products in their own cloud environments and in the industry’s first EDA Software-as-a-Service solution developed in partnership with Microsoft Azure.
The company’s solutions comprehensively address the design process, featuring a large number of EDA products that generally fall into the following categories:
Digital and custom IC design tools are used for designing and verifying complex chips, and for designing the advanced processes and models required to manufacture those chips;
Field programmable gate array (FPGA) design, which accelerate time-to-shipping hardware with deep debug visibility, incremental design, broad language support, and optimal performance and area for FPGA-based products.
Verification, which includes technology to verify that an IC design behaves as intended;
Manufacturing, which includes products that both enable early manufacturing process development and convert IC design layouts into the masks used to manufacture the chips; and
AI-driven EDA solutions, which include AI and machine learning capabilities to boost productivity and improve efficiency throughout the EDA flow.
Digital and Custom IC Design
The company’s Digital Design Family provides customers with a comprehensive digital design implementation solution that includes industry-leading products and redefines conventional design tool boundaries to deliver a more integrated flow than ever before, with better quality and time to results. The platform gives designers the flexibility to integrate internally developed tools as well as those from third parties. With innovative technologies, a common foundation, and flexibility, the company’s Digital Design Family helps reduce design times, decrease uncertainties in design steps, and minimize the risks inherent in advanced, complex IC design. The platform supports multiple technology nodes, including advanced nodes at 12nm, 10nm, 8/7nm, 6 nm, 5/4nm, 3nm and 2 nm, with technology collaborations on next-generation process technologies.
Key design products are available as part of the Digital Design Family and include Fusion Compiler RTL to GDSII design implementation, Design Compiler NXT logic synthesis, IC Compiler II physical design, Synopsys TestMAX test and diagnosis, PrimeTime static timing analysis, PrimePower power analysis, PrimeLib library characterization, StarRC parasitic extraction, IC Validator physical verification and 3DIC Compiler, the industry’s first next-generation chip packaging solution, aimed at enabling customers to combine or stack multiple dice on a single chip.
The company’s Custom Design Family is a unified suite of design and verification tools that accelerates the transistor-level design of robust analog, mixed-signal, and custom-digital ICs. This product family features visually assisted layout automation, high-performance circuit simulation, reliability-aware verification, and natively integrated parasitic RC extraction and physical verification. It includes Custom Compiler layout and schematic editor, StarRC parasitic extraction, IC Validator physical verification and PrimeSimTM. The PrimeSim solution provides a unified workflow of next-generation simulation technologies to accelerate the design and signoff of IC designs, including PrimeSim SPICE, PrimeSimPro, PrimeSim HSPICE and PrimeSimXA. The PrimeWave design environment provides comprehensive analysis and improved productivity and ease of use across all tools in PrimeSim.
The company’s Silicon Lifecycle Management (SLM) family of products improves silicon health and operational metrics at every phase of the device lifecycle. This family of products is built on a foundation of enriched in-chip observability, analytics and integrated automation. Synopsys' SLM in-chip monitoring enables deep insights from silicon to systems by providing meaningful data for continuous analysis and actionable feedback. The solution is integrated with the Digital Design Family for design calibration and analytics and includes Yield Explorer for product ramp analytics, Silicon.da for AI-driven test and production analytics, TestMAX ALE (adaptive learning engine) for intelligent data extraction and communication to the SLM database and PVT IP for in-chip monitoring and sensing.
FPGA Design
FPGAs are complex chips that can be customized or programmed to perform a specific function after they are manufactured. For the process of converting a high-level hardware description language design into an FPGA netlist, a process known as FPGA-logic synthesis, the company offers Synplify FPGA synthesis tools that provide fast runtime, performance, area optimization for cost and power reduction, multi-FPGA vendor support, and incremental synthesis capabilities for faster FPGA design development.
Verification
The company’s Verification Family is built from the company’s industry-leading verification technologies and provides virtual prototyping, static and formal verification, simulation, emulation, FPGA-based prototyping and debug in a unified environment with verification IP, planning, and coverage technology. By providing consistent compile, runtime and debug environments across the flow of verification tasks and by enabling seamless transitions across functions, the platform helps the company’s customers accelerate chip verification, bring up software earlier, and get to market sooner with advanced SoCs.
The individual products and solutions included in the Verification Family include the following:
VC SpyGlass family of static verification technologies including lint, CDC (clock domain crossing), RDC (reset domain crossing), Constraint Checking, Synopsys TestMAX Advisor, and low-power analysis and verification;
VCS functional verification solution, the company’s comprehensive RTL and gate-level simulation technology, including Fine-Grained Parallelism;
Verdi, the company’s next generation platform that provides AI-based SoC debug solution with an integrated development environment and advanced verification management capabilities system;
VC Formal, which leverages ML-based techniques to verify complex SoC designs, find deep corner-case design bugs, and enables formal signoff for control and datapath blocks;
ZeBu emulation systems, which use high-performance hardware to emulate SoC designs so that designers can accelerate hardware, software and power verification of large complex SoCs and perform earlier verification and optimization of the SoC together with software;
HAPS FPGA-based prototyping systems, which are integrated and scalable hardware-software solutions for early software development, hardware verification and system validation of IP blocks to processor subsystems to complete SoCs, including the use of at-speed interfaces, for better performance, higher quality and faster time to market;
Virtualizer virtual prototyping solution, which addresses the increasing development challenges associated with software-rich semiconductor and electronic products by accelerating both the development and deployment of virtual prototypes;
Platform Architect solution, which provides for early analysis and optimization of multi-core SoC architectures for performance and power; and
Other principal individual verification solutions, including the PrimeSim solution and the PrimeWave design environment.
Manufacturing
The company’s manufacturing solutions include Synopsys technology computer-aided design (TCAD), mask synthesis and manufacturing analytics. Synopsys TCAD enables computer-aided simulations to develop and optimize semiconductor process technologies. The company also offers Proteus Mask Synthesis tools, CATS mask data preparation software, Yield Explorer Odyssey, Yield-Manager yield management solutions and QuantumATK atomic-scale modeling software. Synopsys enables its customers to realize the benefits of smart manufacturing by using advanced techniques in AI/ML and large data sets. These smart manufacturing solutions are built upon Synopsys’ extensive expertise in IC design, mask synthesis, process modeling, on-chip test and monitoring techniques and cloud-based data analytics.
The company also provides consulting and design services that address all phases of the SoC development process, as well as a broad range of expert training and workshops on the company’s latest tools and methodologies.
Synopsys.ai: Synopsys' AI-Driven EDA Stack
The company’s EDA software stack spanning design, verification, and manufacturing is augmented with AI and machine learning through the company’s Synopsys.ai suite of complementary solutions. Synopsys.ai offers industry leading AI-driven workflow optimization and data analytics solutions along with breakthrough generative AI capabilities, allowing engineers to accelerate and automate chip design and improve efficiency throughout the entire EDA flow.
The Synopsys.ai suite of solutions include:
DSO.ai – Design Space Optimization for best quality of results and productivity with scaling of exploration design workflows;
VSO.ai – Verification Space Optimization for optimal functional verification coverage and faster turnaround time;
TSO.ai – Test Space Optimization for reduced pattern count, turnaround time and higher coverage;
ASO.ai – Analog Space Optimization for analog design and layout optimization and migration;
Design.da – Design data analytics for actionable insights to unlock untapped power, performance, and area;
Silicon.da – Silicon data analytics for root-cause analysis and part-level traceability of failures to improve key production and silicon operational metrics; and
Fab.da – Manufacturing data analytics for improved process control, time to market and higher yield.
Other
The company’s Other product group includes revenue from sales of products to university programs as well as the company’s optical products, mechatronic simulation, and the impact of gains and losses from foreign currency hedges.
Design IP Segment
The company’s Design IP segment includes its Design IP products, which service companies primarily in the semiconductor and electronics industries.
Design IP Products
As more functionality converges into a single chip or even a multi-die system, the number of third-party IP blocks incorporated into designs is rapidly increasing. The company provides the broadest, most comprehensive portfolio of high-quality, silicon-proven IP solutions for SoCs. The company’s broad Synopsys IP portfolio includes:
High-quality solutions for widely used interfaces such as UCIe, USB, PCI Express, DDR, Ethernet, MIPI and HDMI;
Logic libraries and embedded memories, including memory compilers, non-volatile memory, and standard cells with integrated test and repair;
Processor solutions, including configurable ARC processors, Neural Network processors, Digital Signal Processor cores, and software and application-specific instruction-set processor tools for embedded applications;
Security IP solutions, including cryptographic cores and software, security subsystems, platform security and secured interface IP;
An industry-leading IP offering for the automotive market, optimized for strict functional safety, reliability and cybersecurity standards such as ISO 26262 and ISO 21434; and
SoC infrastructure IP, datapath and building block IP, mathematical and floating-point components, Arm AMBA interconnect fabric and peripherals, and verification IP.
The company’s IP Accelerated initiative augments its established, broad portfolio of silicon-proven Synopsys IP with SoC architecture design support, customized IP subsystems, signal/power integrity analysis and IP hardening to accelerate the product development cycle.
The company offers a broad portfolio of IP that has been optimized to address specific application requirements for the mobile, automotive, digital home, Internet of things and AI/data center markets, enabling designers to quickly develop SoCs in these areas.
Customer Service and Technical Support
A high level of customer service and support is critical to the adoption and successful use of the company’s products. The company provides technical support for the company’s products through application engineering teams.
Post-contract customer support includes providing frequent updates to maintain the utilization of the software due to rapid changes in technology. In the company’s Design Automation and Design IP segments, post-contract customer support for the company’s EDA and IP products also includes access to the SolvNet Plus portal, where customers can explore the company’s complete design knowledge database, access self-help and receive support. Updated regularly, the SolvNet Plus portal includes technical documentation, design tips and answers to user questions. Customers can also engage, for additional charges, with the company’s worldwide network of applications consultants for additional support needs.
In addition, the company offers training workshops designed to increase customer design proficiency and productivity with the company’s products. Workshops cover the company’s EDA products and methodologies used in the company’s design and verification flows, as well as specialized modules addressing systems design, logic design, physical design, simulation and testing. The company offers regularly scheduled public and private courses in a variety of locations worldwide, as well as online training (live or on-demand) through the company’s Virtual Classrooms.
Support for Industry Standards
The company actively creates and supports standards that help the company’s EDA and IP customers increase productivity, facilitate efficient design flows, improve interoperability of tools from different vendors and ensure connectivity, functionality and interoperability of IP building blocks. Standards in the electronic design industry can be established by formal accredited organizations, industry consortia, intercompany licensing , de facto usage, or through open-source licensing. The company’s products support multiple Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) including numerous commonly used frameworks and data and file formats.
In the company’s Design Automation segment, the company’s EDA products support many standards, including the many commonly used hardware description languages: SystemVerilog, Verilog, VHDL and SystemC. The company’s products utilize numerous industry-standard data formats, APIs and databases for the seamless exchange of design data among the company’s tools, other EDA vendors’ products and applications that customers develop internally across design flows.
In the company’s Design IP segment, the company supports a wide range of industry standards within its IP product family to ensure usability and interconnectivity.
Sales and Distribution
The company’s Design Automation and Design IP segment customers are primarily semiconductor and electronics systems companies. The company markets its products and services primarily through direct sales in the United States and the company’s principal foreign markets. The company typically distributes its software products and documentation to customers electronically.
The company maintains sales and support centers throughout the United States. Outside the United States, the company maintains sales, support or service offices in Canada, multiple countries in Europe, Israel and throughout Asia, including Japan, China, Korea, India, and Taiwan.
Revenue Attributable to Product Groups
Revenue from the company’s products and services is categorized into three groups:
EDA, which includes digital and custom IC design software, verification hardware and software products, manufacturing-related design products, FPGA design software, AI driven EDA solutions, and professional services;
Design IP, which includes the company’s interface, foundation, security, and embedded processor IP, IP subsystems, and IP implementation services; and
Other, which includes university programs, optical products, mechatronic simulation, and the impact of gains and losses from foreign currency hedges.
Aggregate revenue derived from one of the company’s customers and its subsidiaries through multiple agreements accounted for 12.6% of the company’s total revenue in the year ended October 31, 2024 (fiscal 2024).
Product Sales and Licensing Agreements
The company typically licenses its software to customers under non-exclusive license agreements that restrict use of the company’s software to specified purposes within specified geographical areas. The majority of licenses to the company’s EDA products are network licenses that allow a number of individual users to access the software on a defined network, including, in some cases, regional or global networks. License fees depend on the type of license, product mix, and number of copies of each product licensed.
The company typically licenses Synopsys IP products under nonexclusive license agreements that provide usage rights for a specific number of designs. Fees under these licenses are typically charged on a per design basis plus, in some cases, royalties.
The company’s hardware products, which principally consist of its emulation and prototyping systems, are either sold or leased to the company’s customers.
The company’s professional services team typically provides design consulting services to the company’s customers under consulting agreements with statements of work specific to each project.
Competition
The company’s competitors include EDA vendors that offer varying ranges of products and services, such as Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Siemens EDA.
Within the company’s Design IP segment, Synopsys competes against numerous other IP providers, including Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Proprietary Rights
The company has a diversified portfolio of more than 3,400 United States and foreign patents issued, and the company will continue to pursue additional patents in the future. The company’s issued patents have expiration dates through 2044 and generally have a term of 20 years from filing.
History
Synopsys, Inc. was founded in 1986. The company was incorporated in 1986 in North Carolina and reincorporated in 1987 in Delaware.
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