Synopsys to Acquire Synplicity

I had missed the news of Synopsys to Acquire Synplicity, Inc. until Aart de Geus mentioned it in his SNUG keynote speech.

Sounds like Synopsys is pretty interested in Synplicity for the "rapid prototyping" capability to check out ASICs before taping them out. The price wasn't too high, either.

I sat with a couple of FPGA designers at SNUG lunch and they spoke highly of Synplicity's FPGA synthesis -- definitely superior to what one can get through the FPGA vendor. With better quality of results from Synplicity, designers may fit their design into a smaller FPGA part, which saves big bucks in production.