Gary Smith’s ESL 2009 Market Trends

After the 46^th DAC in San Francisco where C synthesis was one of the exhibition highlights, Gary Smith’s latest ESL Market Trends report is yet another confirmation that this discipline is taking off and to paraphrase the report title: “is becoming mainstream”.

• Healthy market growth

According to the report, ESL synthesis grew from a $22M market in 2007 to $29.5M in 2008, representing a healthy 35% growth and exceeding an earlier forecast of $28.4M. 

• A clear leader

ESL synthesis is an area where many companies have come and gone. According to the report however, the top 3 companies have remained the same in 2007 and 2008. In order they were: Mentor, Forte and Bluespec. In this dynamic market, the evolutions within this top 3 are especially interesting to note. While both Forte and Bluespec lost market share, Mentor Graphics strengthened its position in this growing segment.

• A “Killer App”

Confirming the importance of ESL synthesis, Gary Smith projects this category to cross the symbolic $100M threshold within 4 short years.

Preparing Recommendations

If you would like learn more about what the report defines as a “major killer app”, the following webinar and this Catapult C demo are good places to start.

For those of you in the Boston area, this upcoming workshop will be a perfect opportunity for a hands-on experience on how to cross the gap between algorithm and hardware implementation with C synthesis.

The full “2009 Market Trends” report is available from Gary Smith EDA.

Preparing Recommendations