MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS), a world leader in semiconductor design software, today announced the Best Paper Awards for the ninth annual Synopsys Users' Group (SNUG®) in Boston, MA. At the Boston event, the first place award for Best Paper went to Clifford Cummings of Sunburst Design, Inc. for "SystemVerilog Implicit Port Enhancements Accelerate System Design and Verification." Second place went to Jonathan Bromley of Doulos for "Creating Stimulus and Stimulating Creativity: Using the VMM Scenario Generator." Third place went to Wilson Snyder of SiCortex, Inc. for "The Ten Edits I Make Against Most IP." The award for Best First-Time Presenter went to Dale Donchin of Analog Devices, Inc. for "From Validation to Generation: Making Hercules Do the Heavy Lifting." The winning papers were selected by the attendees and the SNUG Technical Committee.

SNUG Boston is part of a global program that last year drew more than 5,000 integrated circuit (IC) and system design engineers to nine such technical conferences worldwide. Attendees represent the world's largest semiconductor design and manufacturing companies as well as many innovative start-ups. More than 400 technical users attended this year's Boston event, while the flagship event in San Jose drew record attendance of nearly 1600 Synopsys users in March of 2007.

The Technical Committee Award went to John Vargas of Unisys and Peter Jarvis of Synopsys, Inc. for "When Floorplans Attack: How to Balance Routing, Timing and Area on Problematic Designs." Two Technical Committee Honorable Mentions went to David Brownell and Tushar Ringe of Analog Devices for "A SystemVerilog Coverage Driven Test Generator for Processor Design Verification" and Wilson Snyder of SiCortex, Inc. for "The Ten Edits I Make Against Most IP."

"SNUG's technical depth and ever increasing popularity make it a premier event for engineers who routinely take on challenging semiconductor design and manufacturing issues," said Al Czamara, vice president of Hardware Engineering, LOA Technology and SNUG Boston technical chair. "Attendees regularly tell us that SNUG is an important event to attend because it gives them broad exposure to a range of hot topics in the industry, as well as a chance to interact with their peers."

Aart de Geus, chairman and chief executive officer at Synopsys, addressed attendees at the technical conference with a keynote that focused on what Synopsys is doing to help customers with their challenges in achieving higher quality of results (QoR), faster time to results (TtR) and lower cost of results (CoR). He gave an industry overview that set the context for the economic and technological challenges in the industry and then took a deeper look into QoR, specifically focusing on power management challenges and solutions from system level to manufacturing. He also highlighted some of the exciting progress Synopsys has made in the past year in the TtR arena with advanced verification solutions and IP, and CoR progress with improved yield technology.

"SNUG gives attendees and Synopsys executives and engineers a chance to explore a range of technical challenges and solutions across a spectrum of technologies, tools and applications," said Aart de Geus. "New design challenges emerge each year, but at the heart of SNUG is the technical expertise and willingness to share that is so apparent among the attendees. This year's best paper winners exemplify that spirit and we thank them for sharing their technical insights."

SNUG Boston Sponsors include: Global Sponsors ARM and TSMC; Gold Sponsors Hewlett-Packard and Virage Logic, and Common Platform Technology members Chartered Semiconductor, IBM and Samsung. The two-day SNUG Boston conference featured a technical program with more than 50 presentations that focused on all areas of design including synthesis, verification, low-power design, physical design, test and design-for-manufacturing. This year's program featured 33 user papers, 18 Synopsys technical tutorials and one panel. These presentations focused on the challenges that engineers face as they design complex systems for a wide array of applications.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS) is a world leader in electronic design automation (EDA) software for semiconductor design. The company delivers technology-leading system and semiconductor design and verification platforms, IC manufacturing and yield optimization solutions, semiconductor intellectual property and design services to the global electronics market. These solutions enable the development and production of complex integrated circuits and electronic systems. Through its comprehensive solutions, Synopsys addresses the key challenges designers and manufacturers face today, including power management, accelerated time to yield and system-to-silicon verification. Synopsys is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has more than 60 offices located throughout North America, Europe, Japan and Asia. Visit Synopsys online at http://www.synopsys.com/.

Synopsys and SNUG are registered trademarks of Synopsys, Inc. Any other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the intellectual property of their respective owners.

  Editorial Contacts:

  Yvette Huygen
  Synopsys, Inc.
  650-584-4547
  yvetteh@synopsys.com

  Andrea Zils
  MCA, Inc.
  650-968-8900
  azils@mcapr.com

SOURCE: Synopsys, Inc.

CONTACT: Yvette Huygen of Synopsys, Inc., +1-650-584-4547,
yvetteh@synopsys.com; or Andrea Zils of MCA, Inc., +1-650-968-8900,
azils@mcapr.com, for Synopsys, Inc.

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