Synopsys Showcases Leading innovations in its SNUG Conference 2016

The recently concluded 17^th annual Synopsys User’s Group (SNUG) conference aimed at engineers to better address the productivity challenges they face when designing today’s chips and electronic systems saw an impressive turnout. The conference has become the industry’s premier gathering of semiconductor professionals in India. More than 3,000 Synopsys tool, IP and software users attended the two-day conference on the 13^th and 14^th of July in Bangalore, making it the largest SNUG India event to date.

Launched in 2000, SNUG India is part of a global program that began in 1991 and currently includes 13 user conferences worldwide with more than 10,000 participants annually.

SNUG India 2016 featured 57 user papers, with 43 presentations on design synthesis, low power implementation and verification, test, mixed-signal verification, IP integration, emulation, virtual prototyping and FPGA-based prototyping. This user-driven event promotes strong engagement among semiconductor professionals and provides a platform for sharing best practices and methodologies in semiconductor design. SNUG worldwide is driven by its mission to enable designers to learn, interact and participate. This year’s event featured new Electronic Design Automation (EDA) solutions and design techniques for physical implementation, verification, custom design and IP, to meet the immense challenges posed by designing semiconductor electronics at a scale of 7nm and below.

In her opening keynote address, Deirdre Hanford, executive vice president, customer engagement at Synopsys, spoke about “smart everything” becoming the stimulus that is driving the next wave of innovation forward. She described Synopsys’ unique ability to partner with the semiconductor industry in the quest to produce innovative future designs.

“The smart everything adoption wave in electronics places challenging demands on EDA, IP and software. Additionally, security concerns are complicating adoption and deployment of new smart everything innovations. As our industry looks to the future, the demand for secure solutions, technology leadership and productivity gains has never been greater,” said Hanford.

Dr. Pradip Dutta, corporate vice president and managing director of Synopsys India, said, “SNUG has become the leading forum for the electronic design engineering community to connect with each other, and to interact with Synopsys executives and technologists. This year we had a special academic track discussing the latest research methods from premier Indian universities. This academic research is being adopted by the semiconductor industry as it readies itself for a smart future,” added Dutta.

In his keynote address on “The Art of All Programmable Computing,” Vamsi Boppana, vice president, processing, systems, software and applications & site director and CTO, Xilinx India, spoke about the fundamental shift occurring in computation “It is getting prohibitively expensive to build deep sub-micron silicon products because of rising design, verification and implementation costs and ever increasing software and solution investments. As a result, the class of applications and markets that can afford custom silicon products is shrinking,” commented Boppana. In his keynote, he explored cost and benefit tradeoffs between custom silicon, general purpose, programmable architectures and discussed compelling advantages of all programmable technologies."

A conference of this breadth would not be successful without industry ecosystem participation. SNUG India 2016 Platinum Sponsors are ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Samsung, Socionext and TSMC. 

New Announcement : TetraMAX II Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG)

The company also announced its new TetraMAX II Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) tool delivering 10X faster run time and 25 percent fewer test patterns, is now certified for the ISO 26262 automotive functional safety standard. SGS-TÜV Saar GmbH, an independent accredited assessor, formally certified TetraMAX II, following an in-depth functional safety tool qualification. Certification provides designers the highest level of confidence in the use of TetraMAX II for safety-critical automotive applications and accelerates functional safety qualification for automotive ICs, up to the stringent requirements for automotive safety integrity level ASIL D. 

On the path to delivering fully autonomous cars, automakers are rapidly deploying electronic advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to aid drivers and reduce accidents. Since failures in these systems may lead to unacceptable consequences, automakers work with their suppliers to increase IC quality, reliability and functional safety. TetraMAX II enables engineers to target higher levels of IC test quality, a key requirement for automotive products, by testing for multiple fault models while minimizing the impact on test costs and test pattern generation time. To ensure best engineering practices are used to minimize the risk of failures impacting the functional safety elements of automotive ICs, ISO 26262 defines the qualification requirements for software design tools used in their development. SGS-TÜV Saar GmbH certified TetraMAX II according to ASIL D requirements, the highest level of functional safety prescribed by ISO 26262. 

“Tool qualification according to ISO 26262 is an important contribution to increased engineers’ confidence in the EDA software tools they use to develop automotive ICs targeted at electronic safety systems,” said Gudrun Neumann, product manager of Functional Safety Software at SGS-TÜV Saar GmbH. “Satisfying the ISO 26262 for the most stringent ASIL D applications enables IC design teams to accelerate the overall functional safety certification requirements for their products. Synopsys’ TetraMAX II ATPG complies with the ASIL D safety requirements for software tools used in the development of safety-related electronic systems. SGS-TÜV Saar’s certificate for TetraMAX II is based on a successful functional safety evaluation of validation processes against the requirements of ISO 26262.”

  About SNUG (Synopsys Users Group)

The Synopsys Users Group (SNUG) was established in 1991 to provide users of Synopsys design tools, IP and technology with an open forum in which they could exchange ideas, discuss problems and explore solutions. SNUG has emerged as the largest community of design engineers in the world, with 13 SNUG conferences worldwide drawing more than 10,000 Synopsys customers each year. Attendees represent the world’s largest semiconductor design and manufacturing companies as well as many innovative start-ups. At the heart of each SNUG event is a technical conference focusing on real-world design challenges and featuring peer-reviewed user papers, along with presentations from top Synopsys technologists and industry experts. For further information, visit