“Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS) today took its commitment to
EDA tool interoperability to a new level by announcing the open
source enhancement to its Technology Access Program (TAP-in(sm)),
providing free and open access to Synopsys’ widely used library and
design constraints formats. Synopsys’ new TAP-in open source
feature will initially make available the industry-leading
Liberty(TM) library and Synopsys Design Constraints (SDC) formats.
Syntax checkers and parsers for these formats will also be included
as reference implementations. Synopsys unveiled its TAP-in open
source expansion today at the Fifth Semiannual Interoperability
Developers’ Forum, “EDA Interoperability on Fast Forward.””
“Synopsys’ decision to provide the formats and reference
implementations through open source was a response to requests from
the TAP-in developer community at the October 1999 Developers’
Forum. Open source licensing of the formats provides a more
effective method for the developer community to contribute.”
“”The Synopsys design constraint language is the de facto
industry standard — it’s intuitive and engineers understand it,”
said Chris Malachowsky, vice president of hardware engineering at
NVIDIA. “We use it as the golden source of our timing and physical
requirements from which we drive our entire CAD methodology. The
move to put this language into open source will of course mean
fewer translators, but the ultimate benefit will be in the quality
of results from our tool flow. Real improvements will be realized
when all tools are provided and consistently interpret a single,
succinct specification of our design targets. Delivering NVIDIA’s
industry-leading graphics processors season after season requires
that all of our EDA tools work effectively together. We are
extremely pleased to see that Synopsys is championing
interoperability through this move to open source licensing.””