Forte Design Systems

History The company was founded in 1998 as C2 Design Automation by John Sanguinetti, Andy Goodrich and Randy Allen. A year later the company changed its name to CynApps and began selling C-based synthesis and RTL translation tools. It also distributed an open-source C++ class library called Cynlib, which competed with SystemC. In 2000, CynApps acquired Dasys, a Pittsburgh-based maker of behavioral synthesis tools. In 2001, CynApps merged with Chronology (founded in Redmond, WA, in 1990) to become Forte Design Systems. Forte began selling Cynthesizer, a SystemC-based HLS tool, which had its first successful tapeout in Japan in 2001. In 2009, Forte acquired Arithmatica, whose CellMath Designer tool was integrated into Cynthesizer. In 2012 and 2013, industry analysts found that Cynthesizer was used by 31% of high-level designers, the most of any ESL tool. On February 14, 2014, Cadence Design Systems acquired Forte. In 2015, Cadence released Stratus HLS, which combines the automation and synthesis engine of Cynthesizer with the graphical features of Cadence's previous HLS tool, C-to-Silicon.