MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and MUNICH, May 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS) and Zuken, the engineering consulting company, today announced a partnership to develop an integrated and robust printed circuit board (PCB) design and simulation solution. The intended solution combines two complementary product lines -- Synopsys' Saber® Simulator and Zuken's CR-5000 System Designer -- to deliver a platform for integrated system-level electronic design, simulation and verification. Prompted by requests from mutual customers, Zuken and Synopsys have also established an In-Sync agreement enabling mutual promotion and development work.

The companies have agreed to develop a new, tightly integrated interface between Zuken's CR-5000 System Designer and Synopsys' Saber Simulator for analog and mixed-signal board-level design. Development teams from both companies will use Synopsys' Frameway technology, which has been used to successfully integrate the Saber Simulator with other third-party environments, to create a bi-directional interface between the complementary toolsets. Customers will use System Designer to create their designs, and then directly launch Saber simulations from within the CR-5000 environment. This approach eliminates potential errors by connecting the design implementation, simulator and results analysis within a common interface. Results will be analyzed in Synopsys' CosmosScope™ waveform analyzer.

"We strongly support Synopsys and Zuken working together to improve the PCB design and verification environment. The enhanced integration will undoubtedly increase productivity and improve design reliability. This has a significant impact on design time, ultimately getting higher quality products to market," said Dr.-Ing. Joachim Fetzer, director gasoline systems, Electronic Control Units, Module Engineering from Bosch.

"For the automotive and aerospace sectors that we both serve, highly accurate and reliable physical simulation is critical. The Saber Simulator is the most trusted and recognized analog/mixed-signal simulator in the automotive and aerospace industries. Working with Synopsys to integrate our design and simulation environments, we can improve the quality and reliability of product design. This partnership can make the Zuken solution one of the most comprehensive PCB design environments available," commented Gerhard Lipski, Zuken Americas CEO and European GM.

"Our customers will clearly benefit from this strategic partnership between Synopsys and Zuken as the resulting platform bridges the gap between PCB design and verification. Zuken's CR-5000 design environment is a market leader in the design and layout of printed circuit boards. The integration of the Saber Simulator with CR-5000 System Designer brings robust design methodologies to the board-level design market," stated Mick O'Brien, VP and GM of the Saber product line at Synopsys.

Synopsys' Saber Simulator is a powerful modeling and simulation environment used to simulate, analyze and verify system interactions between multiple physical domains (electrical, magnetic, mechanical, thermal, hydraulic, etc.). With its advanced time domain and frequency domain analyses, comprehensive model libraries, multi-language modeling tools, and powerful waveform analyzer, designers can utilize Robust Design techniques to optimize their designs for performance, reliability and cost. Production-proven on thousands of successful designs in multiple industries, the Saber Simulator is a preferred solution among design teams worldwide for minimizing development costs, reducing design iterations and improving reliability.

CR-5000 is Zuken's scalable and robust PCB and advanced packaging layout suite created for the small to large enterprise market. It incorporates the latest technology with a "Design for Manufacturability" methodology, which enables rules applied early in the design process to be maintained right through to manufacturing, helping to ensure products are right first time and manufacturable first time. System Designer is the design creation part of Zuken's CR-5000 enterprise-wide design solution for the development of advanced electronic products. System Designer is a graphical tool for design capture and analysis. It supports a wide range of graphical and textual design entry methods and is suited to digital, analog and mixed signal circuit design at both system and PCB level. The tool is tightly linked to synthesis, simulation, timing analysis, verification, and debugging, throughout the design process. The design entry methodology has been developed to reduce design time, minimize product cost and size, and improve product quality.

Availability

The companies expect the complete, integrated interface to be available in late 2007.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. is a world leader in EDA software for system and semiconductor design. The company delivers technology-leading semiconductor design and verification platforms and IC manufacturing software products to the global electronics market, enabling the development and production of complex systems-on-chips (SoCs). Synopsys also provides intellectual property and design services to simplify the design process and accelerate time-to-market for its customers. Synopsys is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has offices in more than 60 locations throughout North America, Europe, Japan and Asia. Visit Synopsys online at http://www.synopsys.com/.

About Zuken

Zuken is trusted globally by leading companies to optimize their electrical and electronic engineering design and related manufacturing processes. Our unique combination of proven experience, technological expertise and agility, creates electronic design automation (EDA) solutions as well as computer aided engineering (CAE) solutions that are innovative, dynamic and powerful.

With over 30 years experience, Zuken has grown to become the world's leading provider of EDA software and electronic product lifecycle management (e-PLM). Our solutions optimize the efficiency of electronics and electrical R&D, engineering, manufacturing, new product introduction (NPI), component purchasing and component engineering in the PCB/MCM/HIC market. Listed on Level 1 of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Zuken improves product quality and profitability for electrical and electronics manufacturers globally, from automotive to aerospace, communications to consumer electronics, power to heavy machinery and medical to military markets. With headquarters in Japan, we have development and support centers in 10 countries -- including the US, Germany, UK, France, Italy, China and Taiwan -- and are a trusted partner of more than 4,800 organizations, with over 45,000 individual licenses, worldwide.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements regarding the expected benefits and date of availability of the PCB design, simulation solution, and the integrated interface. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs. Actual results could differ materially from these statements as a result of unforeseen engineering difficulties, uncertainties attendant to any new product offering, the discontinued collaboration between the two companies and certain statements contained in the section of Synopsys' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2007 entitled "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations -- Factors That May Affect Future Results."

Synopsys is a registered trademark of Synopsys, Inc. Saber is a registered trademark of Sabermark Limited Partnership licensed to Synopsys, Inc. Any other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the intellectual property of their respective owners.

  Editorial Contacts:

  Sheryl Gulizia                           Stephen Brennan
  Synopsys, Inc.                           MCA, Inc.
  650-584-8635                             650-968-8900
  sgulizia@synopsys.com                    sbrennan@mcapr.com

  Dionne Knowles                           Amy Clements
  Zuken Ltd.                               Zuken USA Inc.
  +44 (0)1454 207800                       972-691-3284
  dionne.knowles@zuken.co.uk               amy.clements@zuken.com

SOURCE: Synopsys, Inc.

CONTACT: Sheryl Gulizia of Synopsys, Inc., +1-650-584-8635,
sgulizia@synopsys.com; or Stephen Brennan of MCA, Inc. for Synopsys, Inc.,
+1-650-968-8900, sbrennan@mcapr.com; or Dionne Knowles of Zuken Ltd., +44
(0)1454 207800, dionne.knowles@zuken.co.uk; or Amy Clements of Zuken USA Inc.,
+1-972-691-3284, amy.clements@zuken.com

Web site: http://www.synopsys.com/