NEWS & EVENTS

Toshiba Chooses Forte's Behavioral Synthesis for Next-generation Design Flow

Cynthesizer meets or exceeds hand-coded RTL automatically

San Jose, Calif. – December 13, 2004 - Forte Design Systems today announced that Toshiba Corporation has chosen Forte's Cynthesizer SystemC behavioral synthesis product for use in their SystemC design flow. The companies have entered a multi-year agreement to deploy Cynthesizer to shorten the development cycle of Toshiba's next generation system level ICs for the consumer, networking and computer markets. Cynthesizer's significant productivity benefits, superior Quality of Results (QoR), and SystemC language support were key factors in Toshiba's decision.

"As a leading supplier of complex system level ICs, we are constantly working to improve the design process to get new products developed and into volume production faster," said Seiichi Nishio, senior manager methodology at Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor Company. "After extensive evaluations, we determined that by using Cynthesizer, we can substantially reduce the time to design and implement next generation products so that we meet customer needs while taking advantage of the increasing performance and complexity that our advanced technologies provide. Furthermore, Forte was the best vendor that shared our vision of a next-generation design flow and had the products to support it."

"We are very pleased to work with such a leader in the electronics market," said Jacob Jacobsson, Forte's president and CEO. "Toshiba's commitment signals an undeniable move towards design at a higher level of abstraction, with Cynthesizer clearly emerging as the behavioral synthesis tool of choice."

Raises abstraction, reduces design time, improves results
Forte's Cynthesizer SystemC behavioral synthesis product allows design teams to achieve the quality of results necessary for high-volume complex electronic devices in a fraction of time required by a traditional RTL methodology. By moving to a higher level of abstraction and using Cynthesizer, design teams can significantly reduce the time needed to create and implement multi-million gate SoCs and ASICs by automatically synthesizing high quality RTL code. In addition, high-level design models written for Cynthesizer typically require 25-50x less code when compared to handwritten RTL to specify the design intent. This reduction in code size yields significant productivity improvements in verification and debugging.

Cynthesizer is the only behavioral synthesis product available today that allows all candidate RTL implementations to be quickly and automatically synthesized and verified using the testbench originally developed for the behavioral model. This unique capability allows verification to start earlier and reduces the overall effort through reuse of the verification environment. And by supporting SystemC, Cynthesizer meets the market demands for a standard language ensuring tool interoperability.

SystemC for higher-level design
SystemC, the de facto standard for ESL design, is an open source C++ class library that adds necessary hardware capabilities to C and C++ including bit accuracy, concurrency, and timing. SystemC is the only high-level design language that supports all of C and C++ without requiring a proprietary compiler or other proprietary tools. Utilizing a C++ class library allows SystemC hardware abstractions to be easily introduced to any C or C++ design. Over 25,000 people have downloaded SystemC which is supported by over 40 EDA products.

About Cynthesizer
Forte's Cynthesizer significantly reduces the time needed to create complex chips and systems by automatically generating high-quality RTL designs from high-level algorithms. Cynthesizer is silicon proven with uncompromising quality of results that often exceed hand coded RTL. It is the only behavioral synthesis product that offers designers a complete environment including synthesis, verification, and co-simulation. Cynthesizer has been used on over 60 designs and is in production use in many of the largest systems and semiconductor companies worldwide.

About Forte Design Systems
Forte Design Systems is a leading provider of software products that enable design at a higher level of abstraction. Forte's innovative Cynthesizer behavioral synthesis product allows design teams creating complex electronic systems from algorithmic designs using ASICs, SoCs, and FPGAs to significantly reduce their overall design and verification time. Forte is headquartered at 100 Century Center Court, San Jose, CA 95112. For more information, visit www.ForteDS.com.