Forte Design Systems™ (www.ForteDS.com) capped 2012 with 22% growth and was named the #1 provider of electronic system-level (ESL) synthesis software by Gary Smith EDA, the leading provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the global Electronic Design Automation (EDA) market.

"Our commitment to high-value software and top-notch support was validated in 2012 as we moved into the #1 slot for ESL synthesis," says Sean Dart, Forte's president and chief executive officer. "We're looking forward to building upon this success with continued growth forecast for high-level synthesis and our intellectual property offerings for 2013."

Additionally, 2012 was the seventh consecutive year of revenue growth, as Forte added new Cynthesizer™ SystemC high-level synthesis users in Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States, many of whom were using competitive C-synthesis products. Cynthesizer was also deployed more widely in several large semiconductor companies throughout the US, Korea, and Japan. Its CynWare™ and CellMath™ intellectual property (IP) businesses expanded in 2012 as design teams implemented the IP into GPUs and custom processors.

Cynthesizer is the first SystemC-based design solution that closes the gap between ESL design and register transfer level (RTL)-to-GDSII flows. The latest version, introduced in October 2012, has increased performance and capacity across the entire tool suite. New features include higher-level modeling style support to increase design abstraction; expanded optimization and analysis capabilities to reduce design time; and additional integrations with third-party tools handle most every standard design flow.

In 2012, Forte's engineering efforts also included CellMath IP enhancements to meet Open CL compliance. For example, CellMath now contains a single high quality floating point unit that performs rcp/rsq/log/exp/sin/cos/sqrt with improved precision to match the OpenCL (v1.1) requirement for those functions in the supported input intervals. Additionally, versions of the floating point IEEE add2 and IEEE multiplier with denormal support are available to support the "half" datatype in OpenCL.

To keep up with demand, Forte's Marketing and Sales organization expanded in 2012. Growth will continue into 2013 as Forte's plans call for hiring more sales managers, field application engineers and design consultants globally.

About Forte Design Systems

Forte Design Systems™ (www.ForteDS.com) is the #1 provider of electronic system-level (ESL) synthesis software, confirmed by Gary Smith EDA, provider of market intelligence for the global Electronic Design Automation (EDA) market. Forte's software enables design at a higher level of abstraction and improves design results. Its innovative synthesis technologies and intellectual property offerings allow design teams creating complex electronic chips and systems to reduce their overall design and verification time. More than half of the top 20 worldwide semiconductor companies use Forte's products in production today for ASIC, SoC and FPGA design. Forte is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with additional offices in England, Japan, Korea and the United States. For more information, visit www.ForteDS.com.