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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.

My first encounter with HLS, back then behavioural synthesis, dates more than 15 years. Since then my ventures have led me to explore many aspects of the ESL design flow, including HW/SW co-design, architecture exploration and of course, C synthesis. Five years ago, I joined Mentor to develop the Catapult C product line in Europe. Recently, my little family followed me all the way from Paris to Oregon, where I now serve as product marketing manager for Mentor Graphics' high-level synthesis product line. Visit Thomas Bollaert’s Blog

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Preparing Recommendations