“Eight of the top 10 software companies are our customers”
16 March, 2017
Dr. Aart de Geus, founder, co-CEO and chairman of Synopsys: "Technology companies continue to prioritize aggressive adoption of advanced silicon and state-of-the-art design"
“Eight of the top 10 software companies in the world are now Synopsys customers,” said Dr. Aart de Geus, founder, co-CEO and chairman of Synopsys, during his visit to Israel last week. Dr. de Geus visited Israel to mark the 20th anniversary of Synopsys’ branch in Israel. The visit included meetings with key Israeli customers, dinner event with senior decision makers in the Israeli tech sector and an anniversary celebration event at the offices of Synopsys in Hertzliya.
de Geus: “also seven of the top 10 automotive OEMs are Synopsys’ customers and so are 16 of the top 20 commercial banks in the world.” de Geus made general remarks on Synopsys’ current business status, and stressed: “We’re seeing very good momentum with our EDA platforms, continued strength in our IP portfolio and good growth in Software Integrity as we continue to invest and broaden our Total Available Market in this very promising emerging market.”
Relating to Synopsys’ Software Integrity Group he said: “Our strategy is to, first, broaden and deploy our software sign-off platform; second, accelerate our penetration of key verticals in both the embedded and enterprise spaces; and third, drive demand creation, with services, ecosystem partners and certification projects. While it’s early, we’re making great progress.”
Referring to challenges in the Internet of Things, de Geus observed that integrating security and privacy measures throughout the development process of IoT solutions can prevent most of the security vulnerabilities in this space. Dr. de Geus cited the statement of the industry organization Online Trust Alliance that a 100% of recently reported IoT vulnerabilities could have been easily avoided if manufacturers and developers took security and privacy measures into account throughout the development process.
Verification becomes harder
With the rise of “Smart Everything” system and end-products comes the demand for devices that are smaller, faster, consume less power, and are equipped with increasing amounts of software content. As a result, SoC designs have grown tremendously in complexity. Advanced verification teams are now faced with the challenge of not only reducing functional bugs, but also accelerating both software bring-up and time to market. The process of finding and fixing functional bugs and performing software bring-up involves intricate verification flows including virtual platforms, static and formal verification, simulation, emulation and finally, FPGA-based prototyping.
Up until very recently, each step in the verification flow had been isolated and many discontinuities existed between them. The Synopsys Verification Continuum strives towards greater levels of verification productivity and early software bring-up which it achieves through the industry’s fastest engines, with unified compile and unified debug, and native integration between engines, technologies and products. As such, each step in the verification flow is further streamlined, and less time is spent in transitioning between various stages, enabling further dramatic increases in SoC verification productivity, earlier software bring-up and earlier software development.
Silicon is still a priority
At the same time, according to de Geus, automotive has become a key focus segment for Synopsys, touching Synopsys’ IP, EDA and software security portfolios. “Our customer base in automotive continues to widen, including new semiconductor companies as well as OEMs and noted tier 1 suppliers,” explained de Geus. “In the semiconductor space we see several dominant trends. First, in Synopsys’ last financial quarter, from November 2016 to January 2017, the general outlook for the market is more positive compared to earlier quarters.
“Partly because companies invest in early products in various categories: Internet of Things, machine learning, automotive, augmented and virtual reality, networking infrastructure, and the continually growing need for more compute power in the cloud. Technology companies continue to prioritize aggressive adoption of advanced silicon and state-of-the-art design, while being mindful of their need to control costs.”
“All in all, the predictions that we’ve made now for a number of years that electronics would bring about a wave of new opportunities through digital intelligence, is starting to become visible. And I think that is very exciting because if you have something that’s a little bit smart, the one thing you want is to be smarter and one way to make it smarter is to give it more compute power.”
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