1
                       SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

                             WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

                                    FORM 10-K

(MARK ONE)

[X]     ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE
        ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended September 30, 1996

                                       OR

[ ]     TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES
        EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from            to

Commission file number 0-45138

                                 SYNOPSYS, INC.
             (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

              Delaware                                 56-1546236
    (State or other jurisdiction         (I.R.S. Employer Identification Number)
  of incorporation or organization)

                            700 East Middlefield Road
                      Mountain View, California 94043-4033
          (Address of Principal Executive Offices, including ZIP Code)

       Registrant's telephone number, including area code: (415) 962-5000


Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

                                              Name of each exchange
        Title of each class                    on which registered

               None                                   None


Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: Common Stock, $.01
par value.


         Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports
required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of
1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the
registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such
filing requirements for the past 90 days.

                                Yes  X  No
                                    ---    ---

         Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to
Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained,
to the best of registrant's knowledge, in definitive proxy or information
statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any
amendment to this Form 10-K. [ ]

         The aggregate market value of voting stock held by nonaffiliates of the
Registrant as of November 29, 1996 was approximately $1,778,982,219.

         On November 29, 1996, approximately 40,732,478 shares of the
Registrant's Common Stock, $.01 par value, were outstanding.

                       Documents Incorporated by Reference

              (1)  Portions of the Registrant's 1996 Annual Report to
Stockholders for the fiscal year ended September 30, 1996 are incorporated by
reference into Parts I, II and IV hereof.

              (2)  Portions of the Registrant's Notice of Annual Meeting and
Proxy Statement for the Registrant's Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held
on February 28, 1997 are incorporated by reference into Part III hereof.


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Except for the historical information presented, the matters discussed in this
Form 10-K include forward-looking statements that involve risks and
uncertainties. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those
discussed herein. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences
include, but are not limited to, those discussed under the caption "Factors That
May Affect Future Results" under "Management's Discussion and Analysis of
Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the Company's 1996 Annual
Report to Stockholders, which is incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K.

                                    * * * *


                                     PART I

ITEM 1.  BUSINESS

INTRODUCTION

         Synopsys, Inc. (hereinafter sometimes referred to as the "Company")
develops, markets, and supports high-level design automation (HLDA) products for
designers of integrated circuits (ICs) and electronic systems. The Company
offers a range of design tools, verification systems and design reuse tools that
significantly improve designers' productivity by offering improved time to
market, reduced development and manufacturing costs, and enhanced design quality
of results when compared to earlier generations of electronic design automation
(EDA) products. The Company also provides training, support and consulting
services for its customers.

         The foundation of the Company's HLDA methodology is logic synthesis.
The Company pioneered the commercial development of logic synthesis technology
in the late 1980s and is currently the leading provider of synthesis software.
The Company offers both logic and behavioral synthesis products. Logic synthesis
allows designers to use a high-level language to describe a chip, then
automatically converts and optimizes this high-level description into a
gate-level format that can be manufactured by a semiconductor company.
Behavioral synthesis allows designers to specify their designs at the behavioral
level, which is a higher level of abstraction than is permitted by logic
synthesis.

         The Company's verification systems products are used by IC designers in
several stages of system design to help ensure that their ICs will work before
they are manufactured. The Company is a leading provider of software and
hardware models, which are used to test IC designs within the context of the
system into which they will be designed or to simulate the performance of an
entire system or subset of a system before manufacturing. The Company's
simulation products permit engineers to simulate their designs at various stages
of the design process (behavioral, register-transfer and gate-levels).

         The Company's design reuse products are intended to reduce design time
by permitting the straight-forward reuse of previously-proven circuit "blocks."
The Company believes design reuse will be a key to increased productivity of IC
designers as the density and complexity of ICs increases. The Company's design
reuse products include its DesignWare(R) library of synthesizable standard parts
and its proprietary Cell-Based Array (CBA) IC architecture, libraries and
compilers, which are licensed to semiconductor manufacturers.

         The Company markets its products on a worldwide basis and offers
comprehensive customer service, education, consulting, and support as integral
components of its product offerings. Products primarily are marketed through its
direct sales force. The Company has 


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license agreements with many of the world's leading semiconductor, computer,
communications and electronics companies.

INDUSTRY BACKGROUND

         EDA products have played a critical role in accelerating the dramatic
advances in the electronics industry over the past two decades.

         For the past 26 years, IC complexity (as measured by the number of
transistors on a chip) has increased by a factor of 10 every six years - a
formula known in the semiconductor industry as Moore's Law (for the founder of
Intel Corporation). The need for EDA resulted from this increasing complexity,
as well as increased complexity of the electronic systems in which ICs are used
and the scarcity of skilled IC design engineers. Increased IC complexity
lengthened the product design and development cycles while, at the same time,
competition shortened product life cycles. The objectives of EDA are to (a)
reduce time to market, (b) reduce the costs associated with product design and
development, (c) improve the performance and density of complex IC designs, and
(d) improve the predictability of IC manufacture and testing.

         The electronic design process encompasses five basic stages:

         - Determine the architecture of the system (system design);

         - Develop behavioral descriptions of various system elements 
           (behavioral design);

         - Specify the desired architecture of an IC (functional design);

         - Develop schematic diagrams of logic gates that implement this 
           functionality (logic or gate-level design); and

         - Layout the individual transistors and interconnect wires that
           implement the logic, which results in mask sets used to manufacture
           the IC (layout or device design).

         Prior to EDA, this entire process was manual, time consuming, prone to
error, and costly, thus limiting design complexity. In the 1960s and early
1970s, "complex" IC designs consisted of a few hundred logic gates (one logic
gate is equal to approximately four transistors). The EDA industry has evolved
over the past twenty years to automate a significant portion of the design
process, resulting in dramatic productivity increases. Each new generation of
design methods has been based on an enabling technology that provided an
automated linkage between design stages and raised the level of design
abstraction at which designers worked, thus facilitating the design of more
complex ICs by a broader range of designers.

         The first generation of EDA, computer-aided design (CAD), automated the
layout process using dedicated mainframe or high-powered minicomputer systems,
allowing circuit designers to create ICs of several thousand logic gates. In the
late 1970s and early 1980s, computer-aided engineering (CAE) emerged as the
second generation of EDA, with electronic design capture at the logic gate-level
instead of the layout or device level. By the mid-1980s, most IC design was
accomplished using workstation-based CAE tools for schematic capture, gate-level
simulation, and automated placement and routing. In the late 1980s, as
semiconductor process technology advanced, it became possible to manufacture ICs
with hundreds of thousands of gates. Consequently, a new generation of EDA tools
was required that let designers work at even higher levels of abstraction.

         The first successful step towards high-level design was the
introduction of hardware description languages (HDLs) that permitted the
expression of design ideas and functionality at a 


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level independent of silicon implementation. Initial HDL modeling and system
simulation found only limited application because there was no enabling
technology that could translate the functional-level HDL specifications into
gate-level designs.

         Logic synthesis provided the enabling technology that permitted
designers to translate HDL specifications into gate-level designs. Logic
synthesis employs a number of advanced computational algorithms for Boolean
logic manipulation and optimization, timing analysis, and technology mapping. By
raising the level of abstraction at which IC designers work from the gate-level
to the functional-level, logic synthesis has become the focal point of the third
generation of EDA.

         Semiconductor process technology has continued to advance into the
1990s. Chip complexity and density have continued to increase accordingly. At
the same time, the competitive pressures faced by computer, telecommunications,
electronics, automotive and appliance companies and other designers and
consumers of ICs have made design productivity and time-to-market even more
critical factors in selecting IC design methods and tools.

STRATEGY

         The Company's strategy is to lead the evolution of electronic design by
providing methodologies, products and services that maximize the productivity of
its customers. In order to execute this strategy, the Company seeks to develop a
balanced portfolio of design tools that continue to raise the level of
abstraction at which IC developers work and perform superior optimization of IC
design for speed, size and power, provide superior tools to assist in the
verification of IC designs early in the design cycle, enable the large-scale
reuse of intellectual property and provide high quality support, education and
consulting services that meet the needs of its customers.

PRODUCT GROUPS

Design Tools

         Synopsys' design tools consist principally of its core synthesis
product, Design Compiler(TM), and a suite of high-level design products that are
tightly linked to it. The Company is currently the leading provider of logic
synthesis tools. Design Compiler was introduced in 1988 and has been updated
regularly. It is currently used by a broad range of companies engaged in the
design of ICs and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to optimize their
designs for performance and chip area. In fiscal year 1996, the Company
introduced Power Compiler(TM), which permits IC designers to optimize their
designs for power consumption. Optimizing ICs for power consumption is
especially important for portable, battery-powered devices such as laptop
computers and cellular telephones.

         In fiscal year 1996, the Company introduced FPGA Express(TM), a new
synthesis tool for high-density FPGAs and complex programmable logic devices
(CPLDs). FPGA Express is the Company's first product to run on the Windows 95
and Windows NT operating systems, reflecting the fact that personal computers
are the predominant platform for FPGA and CPLD designs.

         The Company believes that behavioral synthesis is a key enabling
technology for the next advance in electronic design productivity. During fiscal
year 1996, Behavioral Compiler(TM), the Company's behavioral synthesis product,
continued to gain market acceptance. Behavioral synthesis permits engineers to
create complex circuits in a high-level shorthand; the designer specifies the
algorithm and the software then helps the designer pick the best architecture.
Early adopters of Behavioral Compiler (which was introduced in 1994) have
reported significant 


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reductions in architecture design time (an important component of overall design
time), while achieving improvements in performance and area.

         The Company's other design tools are integrated with Design Compiler to
offer a comprehensive design environment. HDL Advisor(TM) lets IC designers
analyze and improve their source code before synthesis and simulation runs. The
Company's test synthesis software permits designers to generate high-quality
test patterns and moves IC design testing from the final stages of the design
process to the high-level design process, thus permitting earlier detection of
design defects. The Company's power analysis product lets designers measure and
analyze power consumption earlier in the design cycle than layout-oriented tools
and Power Compiler automatically optimizes for power. The Company's
floorplanning management product acts as a high-level link to the layout process
by taking physical design data into consideration during synthesis.

         Synopsys' design tools offer a number of benefits to customers. Its
synthesis products typically reduce circuit area up to 25% and improve
critical-path timing by approximately 30% when compared to the results achieved
by designers using traditional CAE tools. Logic synthesis supports technology
independent design, giving designers a wide array of options in choosing
semiconductor suppliers and, due to the automated nature of the process, allows
them to efficiently explore architectural alternatives by merely changing the
high-level description or reusing high-level descriptions from one design to
another. Synthesis also can be used to migrate designs from one technology to
another (e.g., CMOS 0.5-micron to CMOS 0.25-micron technology) or retarget from
one implementation approach to another (e.g., FPGA to ASIC (application specific
IC)).

         In order to address the challenges posed by increasing IC complexity
and advances in IC technology, in fiscal year 1996 Synopsys formed a number of
important strategic relationships. In February 1996, the Company and
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) formed an alliance to jointly
develop products in the areas of design planning, timing, test and synthesis,
and the Company acquired a license to use certain IBM technology. In addition,
the Company was selected by SEMATECH, a consortium of the leading U.S.
semiconductor manufacturers, as the prime contractor on a $6 million contract to
deliver next generation tools for designing complex ICs at 0.25-micron and
below. In May 1996, the Company entered into a strategic relationship with
Cooper & Chyan Technology (CCT), Inc. to link the Company's synthesis tools with
CCT's routing technologies. CCT recently announced an agreement to merge with
Cadence Design Systems, Inc., a competitor of the Company. Synopsys is currently
evaluating its relationship with CCT in light of the proposed merger.

Verification Systems

         Verification is the process of ensuring that an IC meets the functional
specifications and timing requirements of its design, and that it will work with
the other components of a system, before it is manufactured. As IC complexity
grows, the importance of verification to the chip design process also grows.
Without adequate verification tools, verification can be a serious bottleneck in
the design process.

         The Company offers a range of verification products, including
simulation and emulation tools and hardware and software models, integrated into
its synthesis-based design flow, that help customers verify their designs before
committing them to silicon.

         In September 1996, the Company introduced two new products that help
address the verification demands of designing increasingly complex ICs.
Cyclone(TM), the Company's new "cycle-based" simulation software, permits IC
designers to simulate their designs using high-level algorithms at the
register-transfer level, which is faster and requires less memory than


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current tools. Synopsys' ARKOS(TM) hardware emulator emulates the behavior of an
ASIC with up to 4 million gates and can operate as an execution engine for
Cyclone, providing accelerated simulation. Together, Cyclone and the ARKOS
hardware emulator permit designers to use emulation and simulation early in the
design process.

         Cyclone and the ARKOS hardware emulator complement the Company's VHDL
System Simulator(TM) (VSS). VSS is used at various stages in the high-level
design process to simulate a system or subsystem to simulate the performance of
an IC within a system. During fiscal 1996, the Company added VSS support for
"VITAL," the industry signoff gate-level modeling standard. VSS, Cyclone and the
ARKOS emulator are all tightly linked to the Company's synthesis products.

         Since the Company's February 1994 merger with Logic Modeling
Corporation, the Company has offered a full range of hardware and software
modeling solutions. The Company currently offers models for more than 13,000
commercially available ICs, including a wide range of microprocessors, DSPs,
CPLDs, memories and standard logic. In addition, the Company offers modeling
technologies to allow designers to create models of both standard and
proprietary devices. These models support all major EDA simulation environments
and a wide range of EDA platforms, giving designers access to a broad range of
models to assist them with verification of their designs.

         Success in the modeling business depends, in part, upon making a wide
range of models and model types. The Company continues to focus its modeling
development efforts on enhancing its ability to quickly and efficiently produce
and distribute new models. The Company seeks to maintain close relationships
with leading semiconductor vendors to ensure model accuracy and the earliest
possible availability. The Company believes that future design verification
methodologies will require models of even more complex components, subsystems,
and systems as customers engage in ever larger and more sophisticated designs.

Design Reuse

         As the number of logic gates on ICs continues to grow, and as ICs
themselves become capable of hosting entire systems rather than single
functions, the reuse of proven design modules will become increasingly important
to IC designers. The Company's design reuse products are intended to enable such
reuse.

         Since the Company's acquisition of Silicon Architects(TM) in May 1995,
it has offered a proprietary IC architecture, known as Cell-Based Array (CBA),
and compilers for high-level memories and data path elements. The CBA
architecture consists of optimized libraries of low level elements in an IC. The
Company licenses these libraries to ASIC manufacturers and adapts the libraries
for use in the manufacturer's particular production process. The CBA libraries
are then used in lieu of the manufacturer's proprietary library. Replacing
vendor-specific libraries with optimized CBA libraries can provide cost benefits
to ASIC vendors by reducing the silicon area required for a given design and can
provide improved performance and power consumption levels compared to other IC
architectures. The CBA architecture also offers the Company's customers a link
between synthesis-based high-level design and the physical implementation of
designs. The Company has entered into CBA license agreements with many of the
world's leading ASIC vendors.

         DesignWare, introduced in 1992, provides IC designers with libraries of
pre-designed and pre-verified off-the-shelf design modules to incorporate into
their own designs. By providing these building blocks and making them
synthesizable (i.e., usable by the Company's design tools in optimizing a
design), DesignWare helps reduce the overall design time for complex ICs. The
reuse of these building blocks represents a significant shift from traditional
IC 


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design, in which designs have been intimately tied to a particular process
technology or design methodology and not easily transferred from one chip design
to the next. By the end of fiscal year 1996, over 100 design modules were
available in DesignWare libraries. The Company intends to make more modules
available and to increase the size and functions of the available modules.
DesignWare Developer(TM) is used in conjunction with DesignWare and permits
designers to create their own proprietary reusable DesignWare components.

PRODUCTS

         The Company's products include design tools, verification systems and
design reuse tools, as summarized below. In addition, the Company offers
interface products that permit the sharing of data with other EDA systems and
library tools that assist semiconductor vendors in developing technology
libraries.

Design Tools

         Behavioral Compiler. Behavioral Compiler provides a direct link from
the functional descriptions of a design to HDL Compiler(TM) and Design Compiler
for implementation. By permitting IC designers to work at a higher level of
abstraction than permitted by other tools, Behavioral Compiler simplifies IC
design and, in the process, makes the design more reliable and predictable.

         HDL Compiler Family. The HDL Compiler family includes VHDL Compiler and
HDL Compiler (for Verilog). The HDL Compiler family synthesizes HDL descriptions
into optimized, technology independent netlists for the Design Compiler family.

         Design Compiler Family. The Design Compiler family consists of products
that synthesize hierarchical descriptions of circuits in any combination of
equations, state tables, and netlists from external CAE systems or the Synopsys
HDL Compiler family and optimizes such designs to meet timing and area
requirements given a particular technology library.

         Power Family. Includes DesignPower(R) and Power Compiler, offering a
complete methodology for power. DesignPower analyzes power consumption early in
the design process, helping to avoid surprises late in the design process that
could force designers to use more expensive packaging, "re-spin" designs, and/or
add cooling devices to meet power consumption requirements. Power Compiler
offers "push button" power optimization on top of designs developed with
DesignPower. When used in conjunction with Design Compiler, Power Compiler
enables simultaneous optimization for size, timing and power.

         FPGA Compiler(TM). FPGA Compiler works with the Design Compiler to
synthesize designs for implementation in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)
from a number of manufacturers, including Actel, Altera, Lucent Technologies and
Xilinx.

         FPGA Express. FPGA Express offers synthesis and optimization for FPGAs
and complex programmable logic devices on Windows 95 or Windows NT-based PCs.

         Test Compiler(TM). Test Compiler works with the Design Compiler family
to integrate testability analysis and design-for-test capabilities into the
design process. Test Compiler lets designers explore testability trade-offs
early in the design process and automatically generates vectors needed to test
the design.

         HDL Advisor. HDL Advisor helps designers reduce the number of design
iterations by providing a source-level performance analysis tool for use either
before or after synthesis or simulation.



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         DesignTime(TM). DesignTime delivers full static timing analysis within
Synopsys' high-level design environment, permitting a designer to perform
point-to-point timing analysis using the same vendor-certified libraries, timing
algorithms, and interfaces used to create the design.

         Floorplan Manager(TM). Floorplan Manager takes into account physical
design information from a commercial floorplanner early in the design process,
promoting convergence between synthesis and layout and reducing design time by
reducing post-layout timing violations.

         COSSAP. COSSAP(R) is a second-generation DSP design system that can
simulate large, complex, high-level systems that would be hard to model with
standard cycle-based or event-driven simulators. COSSAP includes a library of
DSP building blocks.

Verification Systems

         VHDL System Simulator (VSS) Family. The VSS family provides a single
simulation environment for the three major stages of IC design -- behavioral,
logic, and gate -- letting designers capture and verify high-level
specifications and detect design inconsistencies before and after committing
designs to synthesis. It also includes a source-level debugging tool and
post-processing utilities, including statistical analysis.

         Cyclone. Cyclone, the Company's new "cycle-based" simulation software,
permits IC designers to simulate their designs using cycle-based algorithms at
the register-transfer level, which is faster and requires less memory than
current tools.

         ARKOS Emulator. Synopsys' ARKOS hardware emulator emulates the behavior
of an ASIC with up to 4 million gates and can operate as an execution engine for
Cyclone, providing accelerated simulation.

         ModelSource(TM) 3000 Hardware Modeling Products. The ModelSource 3000
series is a family of hardware modeling systems for ASIC and board level design
which provide a flexible means for designers to model complex devices.
ModelSource 3000 systems use the actual integrated circuit to model its own
behavior.

         SmartModel(R) Library and SourceModel Library(R). These two libraries
include models of more than 13,500 devices, representing all major device types
and semiconductor manufacturers. The SmartModel Library features models of
complex devices--microprocessors, controllers, peripherals, FPGAs and logic
devices--that engineers would not typically model themselves. The SourceModel
Library offers designers models of commonly-used standard logic and memory
devices. Models are furnished in either Verilog or VHDL source code.

         Bus Interface Models. Bus interface models are used to verify that
designs comply with established industry standards. Models are available for
popular standards including: Peripheral Component Interface (PCI), Personal
Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA), MicroChannel
Architecture (MCA), Industry Standard Interface (ISA), Extended Industry
Standard Interface (EISA), Small Computer Systems Interface-2 (SCSI-2), and
Versa Module Eurocard (VME) standards.

         Telecommunications Workbenches. The Company's Telecommunications
Workbench products provide a high-level design verification environment for
telecommunications applications.



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Design Reuse

         DesignWare. DesignWare provides libraries of flexible, ready-to-use
digital components that are technology-independent, parameterizable and
synthesizable. DesignWare libraries include commonly used functions ranging from
simple modules, such as multipliers, to more complex functions. DesignWare
libraries are tightly coupled to the Company's high-level design environment.

         DesignWare Developer(TM). DesignWare Developer helps customers develop
their own DesignWare components from which they can build an inventory of design
knowledge that can be leveraged across multiple development teams or in
subsequent design cycles.

         Cell-Based Array (CBA) Architecture and Macrocell Libraries. The
Company's CBA architecture offers semiconductor vendors the customization
advantages of gate array architecture with the density and performance and power
advantages of standard cell design. Macrocell libraries contain circuit elements
used by the CBA Design System(TM) and Synopsys synthesis tools. Compilers for
complex datapath and memory blocks based on CBA are also available.

         Memory and Datapath Compilers. Compilers are used to quickly generate
optimized general purpose functions for an IC, and are parameterized to allow
the designer to generate a function of optimal size, performance and power.

         CBA Design System. The CBA Design System provides several Silicon
Architect-developed tools with integration of commercial EDA tools to facilitate
design of complex ICs based on the CBA Architecture.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT

         The Company devotes substantial resources to providing customers with
technical support, customer education, and consulting services. The Company
believes that a high level of customer service and support is critical to the
adoption and successful utilization of its high-level design automation
methodology.

         As a result of the continued growth of the Company's installed base, as
well as customer requests for education, support and consulting services, the
Company's service revenue has increased as a percentage of total revenue,
representing 31%, 32% and 34% of total revenue in fiscal 1994, 1995, and 1996,
respectively.

Technical Support

         Technical support is provided through both field- and corporate-based
technical application engineering groups. The Company provides customers with
software updates and a formal problem identification and resolution process
through the Synopsys Technical Support Center. The Company's central entry point
of all customer inquiries is SOLV-IT!(R), a direct-access service available
worldwide, 24 hours per day, through electronic mail and the World Wide Web that
lets customers quickly seek answers to design questions or more insight into
design problems. SOLV-IT! combines Synopsys' complete design knowledge database
with sophisticated information retrieval technology. Updated daily, it includes
documentation, design tips, and answers to user questions.



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Customer Education Services

         Synopsys offers a number of workshops focused on high-level design,
simulation, behavioral synthesis, logic synthesis, and test. Regularly scheduled
workshops are offered in Mountain View, California; Austin, Texas; Burlington,
Massachusetts; Reading, England; Rungis, France; Munich, Germany; Tokyo and
Osaka, Japan; and Seoul, Korea. On-site workshops are available on a worldwide
basis at customers' facilities. To date, over 15,000 design engineers have been
trained in the use of Synopsys' products through participation in Company
workshops.

Consulting

         The Company provides consulting services through its Professional
Services Group, which offers customized high-level design support for IC and
systems designs. Synopsys consultants are experienced designers who provide
customers with in-depth technical expertise in the use of Synopsys' HLDA
methodology and tools. Synopsys offers both methodology and project consulting.
Methodology consulting is aimed at increasing customer productivity, promoting
the adoption of the Company's HLDA methodology and solving immediate needs of
customers' design teams. Project consulting involves Synopsys experts working
with customer design teams from design implementation through simulation,
synthesis and tapeout.

PRODUCT WARRANTIES

         The Company generally warrants its products to be free from defects in
media and to substantially conform to material specifications for a period of 90
days. The Company has not experienced significant returns to date.

SUPPORT FOR INDUSTRY STANDARDS

         The Company actively supports standards that it believes will help its
customers increase productivity and solve design problems, including support for
key standards that promote system-on-chip design and allow tool
interoperability. The Company's products support the two most commonly used
hardware description languages, VHDL and Verilog HDL. The Company's de facto
standard register-transfer-level subsets of the VHDL and Verilog languages were
donated to the EDA Industry Council for its project to create a formal standard
RTL subset. Netlist and schematic input/output are supported through the
Electronic Data Interchange Format. The products support simulation modeling
with the VHDL Initiative Towards ASIC Libraries (VITAL) standard. Ties to
physical design tools are provided by the Company's support of Standard Delay
Format and Physical Design Exchange Format. The latter was donated to the
industry for standardization as part of a Delay Calculation System for deep
submicron design. The Company contributes to this Delay Calculation System
standardization effort which includes, in addition to PDEF, the Delay
Calculation Language (DCL), donated by International Business Machines
Corporation, and the Standard Parasitic Extended Format, donated by Cadence
Design Systems, Inc. The Company donated its SWIFT modeling interface to the
Open Modeling Forum for a common simulator interface from models written in
various formats.

         The Company is on the Board of Directors of the standards groups Open
Verilog International, VHDL International, Open Modeling Forum (OMF), and CAD
Framework Initiative. As a member of SEMI/SEMATECH and the EDA Industry Council,
the Company is participating in the EDA Industry Standards Roadmap and the
active projects that are implementing the Roadmap. The Company is the prime
contractor for SEMATECH's Chip Hierarchical Design System, which is predicated
on open standards. The Company also contributes to the efforts of the Design
Automation Standards Committee of the IEEE. The 


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Company's software is chiefly written in C language and utilizes the Motif and
X11 standards for graphical user interfaces. The Company's software runs
principally under the UNIX operating system and is offered on the most widely
used workstation platforms, including those from Sun Microsystems,
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation and Sony. Certain of the
Company's software modeling products and FPGA Express run on the Windows '95 and
Windows NT operating system and are available for IBM-compatible PCs.

SALES, DISTRIBUTION AND BACKLOG

         The Company markets its products and services primarily through its
direct sales and service force in over 30 offices in the United States and
principal international markets. The Company employs highly skilled engineers
and technically proficient sales persons capable of serving the sophisticated
needs of the customers' engineering and management staffs.

         For fiscal 1994, 1995, and 1996, international sales represented 48%,
52%, and 49%, respectively, of the Company's total revenue. Additional
information relating to domestic and foreign operations is contained in Note 8
of Note to Consolidated Financial Statements on page 42 of the Company's 1996
Annual Report to Stockholders.

         As of September 30, 1996, the Company's direct sales and service force
consisted of 600 management, technical, and administrative employees. The
Company has nineteen sales/support centers throughout the United States.
Internationally, the Company has sales/support offices in Canada, Finland,
France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, the People's Republic
of China, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom, including regional
headquarters offices in Germany, Japan and Singapore. On a limited basis, the
Company also utilizes manufacturer's representatives and distributors. The
Company has established such relationships in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong,
India, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.

         The Company's backlog was approximately $176.4 million on November 2,
1996, as compared to $99.4 million on November 4, 1995. The Company's backlog
includes orders for customer training and consulting services which are expected
to be completed within one year, orders for systems and software products and
related maintenance and support with customer requested ship dates within three
months, and deferred revenue, which consists of subscription services,
maintenance and support. The Company has not historically experienced
significant cancellations of orders. Customers frequently reschedule or revise
the requested ship date of orders, however, which can have the effect of
deferring recognition of revenue for these orders beyond the expected time
period.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

         The Company believes that its future performance will depend in large
part on its ability to maintain and enhance its current product lines, develop
new products, maintain technological competitiveness, and meet an expanding
range of customer requirements. In addition to product development teams, the
Company maintains an advanced research group that is responsible for exploring
new directions and applications of the core technologies, migrating new
technologies into the existing product lines, and maintaining strong research
relationships outside the Company both within industry and academia.
Relationships are maintained with third-party software and hardware vendors to
broaden the product lines without direct investment and with all major hardware
vendors on whose platforms the Company's products operate.

         During fiscal 1994, 1995, and 1996, research and development expenses
were $41.3 million, $58.7 million, and $84.2 million, respectively, excluding
capitalized software development costs. Capitalized software development costs
for these periods were $1.5 million, 


                                       11
   12
$1.0 million, and $1.0 million, respectively. The Company anticipates that it
will continue to commit substantial resources to research and development in the
future.

MANUFACTURING

         The Company's manufacturing operations consist of assembling, testing,
packaging and shipping its hardware and software products and documentation
needed to fulfill each order. All manufacturing is currently performed in the
Company's Mountain View, California and Beaverton, Oregon, facilities. Outside
vendors provide tape and CD-ROM duplication, printing of documentation and
manufacturing of packaging materials. The manufacturing and test of hardware
products is done by Company employees, with some sub-assembly performed by
outside vendors. The Company typically ships its software products, with either
a permanent or temporary access key, within 10 days of acceptance of customer
purchase orders and execution of software license agreements, unless the
customer has requested otherwise. For its hardware products, the Company buys
components in anticipation of orders and builds units to match orders, typically
shipping within four to twelve weeks of order acceptance, unless the customer
has requested otherwise.

COMPETITION

         The EDA industry is highly competitive. The other principal companies
in the EDA industry are Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Mentor Graphics Corp.,
Viewlogic Corporation, Avant! Corporation and Quickturn Design Systems Inc.
There are many other companies in the EDA industry and frequent new entrants,
including businesses targeted at Synopsys' product areas.

          The Company's products compete with similar products from other
vendors and compete with other EDA products and services for a share of the EDA
budgets of their customers. The Company believes that the principal competitive
factors in the EDA market are product performance, technology leadership,
methodology support, technical support, support of industry standards, price,
and reputation. The Company believes that it currently competes favorably with
respect to these factors.

         To date, the majority of the Company's revenue has resulted from sales
of synthesis and synthesis-related HLDA tools, and modeling products, both
market segments in which the Company is currently the leading provider. As the
Company's business evolves, it expects to continue to face competition in the
core product areas of synthesis and modeling and to face competition both in new
product areas and from competing alternatives for its customers' EDA dollars
(e.g., internal spending, services, out-sourcing of design or other tools).
Although the Company has maintained its market leadership in synthesis and
modeling, a loss of market share or price/margin reduction resulting from
increased competition could have a significant adverse effect on the Company.

         More generally, the EDA industry as a whole is experiencing rapid
change. Technology advances and market requirements are fueling a change in the
nature of competition among EDA vendors. Advances in semiconductor technology
are expected to create a need for tighter integration between logic design and
physical design, and companies will increasingly compete over "design flows"
involving a broad range of products and services rather than individual design
tools.

         No single EDA company currently offers its customers industry leading
products for a complete design flow. Presently, the Company does not offer
physical design tools, a market which is currently dominated by Cadence and
Avant!, and trails Cadence in its capacity to offer design services. In May
1996, the Company entered into a strategic relationship with Cooper &


                                       12
   13
Chyan Technology, Inc. (CCT) to link the Company's existing synthesis products
and its design planning products under development with CCT's routing
technology. Cadence and CCT have announced their intention to merge. The Company
is evaluating the effect of such a merger on its relationship with CCT.

         To counter competition, the Company will continue to enhance its
product line and promote the adoption of new products and methodologies.
However, there can be no assurance that the Company will be able to compete
successfully against current and future competitors or that competitive pressure
faced by the Company will not materially adversely affect its business,
operating results and financial condition.

PRODUCT SALES AND LICENSING AGREEMENTS

         The Company offers its hardware products for sale or lease. The Company
typically licenses its software to customers under non-exclusive license
agreements that transfer title to the media only and that restrict use of the
software to internal purposes at specified sites. The Company currently licenses
the majority of its software as a network license that allows a number of
individual users to access the software on a defined network. License fees are
dependent on the type of license, product mix and number of copies of each
product required. On certain software products the Company will collect royalty
payments in addition to license fees.

PROPRIETARY RIGHTS

         The Company primarily relies upon a combination of copyright, patent,
trademark and trade secret laws and license and nondisclosure agreements to
establish and protect proprietary rights in its products. The source code for
the Company's products is protected both as a trade secret and as an unpublished
copyrighted work. However, it may be possible for third parties to develop
similar technology independently, provided they have not violated any
contractual agreements or intellectual property laws. In addition, effective
copyright and trade secret protection may be unavailable or limited in certain
foreign countries. Because the EDA industry is characterized by rapid
technological change, the Company believes that factors such as the
technological and creative skills of its personnel, new product developments,
frequent product enhancements, name recognition and reliable product
maintenance, coupled with the various forms of legal protection that are
available for its technology, provide an effective means for the Company to
establish and maintain a technology leadership position. The Company currently
holds several U.S. and foreign patents on some of the technologies included in
its products and will continue to pursue additional patents in the future.

         Although the Company believes that its products, trademarks and other
proprietary rights do not infringe on the proprietary rights of third parties,
and although to date the Company has received no communications from third
parties alleging the infringement of the proprietary rights of such parties,
there can be no assurance that infringement claims will not be asserted against
the Company in the future or that any such claims will not require the Company
to enter into royalty arrangements or result in costly and time-consuming
litigation.

EMPLOYEES

         As of September 30, 1996, the Company had a total of 1,716 employees,
of whom 1,333 were based in the United States and 383 were based
internationally. Of the total, 762 were engaged in marketing, sales and related
customer support services, 548 were in research and development, 123 were in
operations and 283 were in administration and finance. The Company's future
financial results depend, in part, upon the continued service of its key
technical and senior management personnel and its continuing ability to attract
and retain highly qualified 


                                       13
   14
technical and managerial personnel. Competition for such personnel is intense
and there can be no assurance that the Company can retain its key managerial and
technical employees or that it can attract, assimilate or retain other highly
qualified technical and managerial personnel in the future. None of the
Company's employees is represented by a labor union. The Company has not
experienced any work stoppages and considers its relations with its employees to
be good.

ITEM 2.       PROPERTIES

         The Company's principal administrative, sales, marketing, research and
development facilities are located in five adjacent buildings in Mountain View,
California, which together provide approximately 415,000 square feet of
available space. These buildings are leased through February 28, 2003.

         On January 2, 1996 the Company entered into a build-to-suit lease
arrangement for two buildings in Sunnyvale, California, within one-half mile
from its principal offices. The buildings will provide approximately 200,000
square feet of additional space, and are expected to be available for occupancy
in mid-1997. The lease term is ten years from the date of occupancy.

         The Company leases approximately 53,000 square feet in Beaverton,
Oregon for administrative, marketing, research and development and support
activities. This facility is leased through December 31, 1998.

         The Company currently leases nineteen other domestic sales offices
throughout the United States. The Company currently leases international sales
and/or service offices in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel,
Italy, Japan, Korea, the People's Republic of China, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan,
and the United Kingdom. The Company also leases a research and development
facility in India.

         The Company believes that its existing facilities are adequate for its
current needs and that additional space will be available as needed.

ITEM 3.       LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

         There are no material legal proceedings pending against the Company.

ITEM 4.       SUBMISSION OF MATTERS TO A VOTE OF SECURITY HOLDERS

         No matters were submitted for a vote of security holders during the
fourth quarter of the fiscal year covered by this Report.

Executive Officers of the Company

The executive officers of the Company and their ages, as of December 20, 1996,
are as follows:

Name                         Age        Position

Harvey C. Jones, Jr.         43         Chairman of the Board of Directors

Aart J. de Geus              42         President, Chief Executive Officer and
                                        Director



                                       14
   15
Chi-Foon Chan                47         Executive Vice President, Office of the
                                        President, Senior Vice President, Design
                                        Tools Group and Design Reuse Group

William W. Lattin            56         Executive Vice President and Director

David C. Bullis              44         Senior Vice President, Verification 
                                        Systems Group

Sally A. DeStefano           49         Senior Vice President, Human Resources
                                        and Facilities

Alain J. Labat               41         Senior Vice President, Worldwide Field
                                        Operations

Paul Lippe                   38         Senior Vice President, Business
                                        Development & Legal, Secretary

A. Brooke Seawell            49         Senior Vice President, Finance and
                                        Operations, and Chief Financial Officer


         Harvey C. Jones, Jr. joined the Company in December 1987 and has been
serving as Chairman of the Board since December 1992. He was first elected as a
Director in 1988. He served as Chief Executive Officer from December 1987 until
January 1994. Prior to joining Synopsys, Mr. Jones served as President and Chief
Executive Officer of Daisy Systems Corporation, a CAE company he co-founded in
1981. From 1974 to 1981, Mr. Jones was employed by Calma Company, a CAD company,
where his last position was Vice President, Business Development. Mr. Jones
holds a B.S. in mathematics and computer sciences from Georgetown University,
and an M.S. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr.
Jones is a director of Remedy Corporation, a developer of client/server
software.

         Dr. Aart J. de Geus co-founded the Company in December 1986 and
currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer. He has served as a
Director since 1986. He served as President from December 1992 until January
1994. Prior to December 1992, Dr. de Geus served as Chairman of the Board and
Senior Vice President, Marketing of the Company. Prior to his appointment as
Senior Vice President, Marketing, Dr. de Geus served as the Company's Senior
Vice President, Engineering. From 1982 to 1986, Dr. de Geus was employed by
General Electric Corporation, where he was the Manager of the Advanced
Computer-Aided Engineering Group. Dr. de Geus holds an M.S.E.E. from the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, and a Ph.D. in
electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University.

         Dr. Chi-Foon Chan joined the Company in May 1990 and currently serves
as Executive Vice President, Office of the President. He also serves as Senior
Vice President, Design Tools Group (since February 1994) and Design Reuse Group
(since October 1996). Prior to February 1994, Dr. Chan served as Vice President,
Engineering and General Manager, DesignWare Operations, and prior to October
1993, he served as Vice President, Application Engineering and Services. From
March 1987 to May 1990, Dr. Chan was employed by NEC Electronics, a diversified
electronics company, where his last position was General Manager of the
Microprocessor Division. Dr. Chan holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in computer
engineering from Case Western Reserve University.



                                       15
   16
         Dr. William W. Lattin is an Executive Vice President of the Company and
has been a Director of the Company since July 1995. Dr. Lattin joined the
Company in February 1994 in connection with the Company's merger with Logic
Modeling Corporation ("LMC"). From October 1994 to July 1995 he served as the
Company's Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing, and from February 1994
until October 1994 Dr. Lattin served as Senior Vice President, Logic Modeling
Group. From December 1992 to February 1994, Dr. Lattin served as President,
Chief Executive Officer and Director of LMC, and from May 1992 to December 1992
he served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of LMC. From 1986
to May 1992, Dr. Lattin served as Chairman of the Board of Directors, President
and Chief Executive Officer of Logic Automation Incorporated, a predecessor of
LMC. Dr. Lattin holds a B.S.E.E. and an M.S.E.E. from the University of
California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona
State.

         David C. Bullis joined the Company in February 1994 in conjunction with
the merger of Synopsys and LMC, and currently serves as Senior Vice President,
Verification Systems Group. Prior to October 1994, Mr. Bullis served as Vice
President, SmartModel Division. From May 1993 to February 1994, Mr. Bullis
served as Vice President and General Manager, SmartModel Division of LMC and
from May 1992 to May 1993, he served as Vice President, Sales of LMC. From 1991
to May 1992, Mr. Bullis served as Vice President, Sales of Logic Automation
Incorporated. From 1984 to 1991, Mr. Bullis was employed by Summation Inc., a
manufacturer of systems for board testing, most recently as Chief Executive
Officer. Mr. Bullis holds a B.S.E.E. from Iowa State University and an M.S.E.E.
from Colorado State University.

         Sally DeStefano joined the Company in June 1995 and currently serves as
Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Facilities. From June 1989 until June
1995, Ms. DeStefano was Vice President of Human Resources of Sybase, Inc., a
vendor of client/server software and services for building enterprise-wide
information systems. From April 1986 to May 1989, Ms. DeStefano served as
Director, then Vice President of Human Resources for Ungermann-Bass, a
manufacturer of computer network software and equipment. Prior to 1986, she
spent two years at VLSI Technology, Inc., a semiconductor manufacturer, as human
resources manager. Ms. DeStefano holds a B.A. in Education from the University
of Florida.

         Alain J. Labat joined the Company in December 1990 and currently serves
as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Field Operations. Prior to February 1994,
Mr. Labat served as Vice President, International Operations. From 1986 to 1990,
Mr. Labat was employed by Valid Logic Systems, Inc., a CAE company, serving in a
variety of positions, most recently as Vice President of International
Operations. Mr. Labat holds a Master's degree in International Management from
the American Graduate School of International Management, Glendale, Arizona, and
an M.B.A. from INSEEC, Bordeaux, France.

         Paul Lippe joined the Company in October 1992 and currently serves as
Senior Vice President, Business Development & Legal, and as Secretary. Mr. Lippe
was previously employed by Solbourne Computer as Vice President, Corporate
Development, General Counsel and Secretary and served as Chairman of the
Colorado Air Quality Control Commission. Mr. Lippe currently is Co-Chairman of
the Peninsula Association of General Counsels. Mr. Lippe holds a B.A. from Yale
College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

         A. Brooke Seawell joined the Company in March 1991 and currently serves
as Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations and Chief Financial Officer.
From March 1991 to February 1994, Mr. Seawell served as Vice President, Finance
and Operations and Chief Financial Officer. From July 1983 to March 1991, Mr.
Seawell served as Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Weitek
Corporation, a supplier of numeric semiconductors. Mr. Seawell is a Certified
Public Accountant and holds a B.A. in economics and an M.B.A. from Stanford
University.

                                       16
   17
         There are no family relationships among any executive officers of the
Company.

                                     PART II

ITEM 5.       MARKET FOR REGISTRANT'S COMMON EQUITY AND RELATED STOCKHOLDER 
              MATTERS

         The information required by this item is set forth on page 21 of the
Company's 1996 Annual Report to Stockholders and is incorporated herein by
reference.

ITEM 6.       SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

         The information required by this item is set forth on page 20 of the
Company's 1996 Annual Report to Stockholders and is incorporated herein by
reference.

ITEM 7.       MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND
              RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

         The information required by this item is set forth on pages 22 through
28 of the Company's 1996 Annual Report to Stockholders and is incorporated
herein by reference.

ITEM 8.       FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

         The consolidated financial statements required by this item are
included on pages 30 through 42 of the Company's 1996 Annual Report to
Stockholders and are incorporated by reference. With the exception of the
aforementioned information and the information incorporated in Items 5, 6 and 7,
the Company's 1996 Annual Report to Stockholders is not to be deemed filed as
part of this Form 10-K Annual Report. The report of the Company's Independent
Auditors on the Company's consolidated financial statements is included on page
29 of the Company's 1996 Annual Report to Stockholders and is incorporated by
reference. The report of the Company's Independent Auditors on the financial
statement schedule required by this item is included herein on page 23.

ITEM 9.       CHANGES IN AND DISAGREEMENTS WITH ACCOUNTANTS ON ACCOUNTING AND
              FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE

         Not applicable.

                                    PART III

ITEM 10.      DIRECTORS AND EXECUTIVE OFFICERS OF THE REGISTRANT

         Information with respect to Directors is included under the caption
"Proposal One -- Election of Directors" in the Company's Notice of Annual
Meeting and Proxy Statement for the Company's annual meeting of stockholders to
be held on February 28, 1997 and is incorporated herein by reference.
Information with respect to Executive Officers is included under the heading
"Executive Officers of the Company" in Part I hereof after Item 4.

         Information regarding delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of
Regulation S-K is included under the heading "Compliance with Section 16(a) of
the Securities Exchange Act of 


                                       17
   18
1934" under the caption "Additional Information" in the Company's Notice of
Annual Meeting of Stockholders and Proxy Statement for the Company's annual
meeting of stockholders to be held on February 28, 1997 and is incorporated
herein by reference.

ITEM 11.      EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

         The information required by this item is included under the heading
"Executive Compensation" under the caption "Proposal One -- Election of
Directors" in the Company's Notice of Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement for the
Company's annual meeting of stockholders to be held on February 28, 1997 and is
incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 12.      SECURITY OWNERSHIP OF CERTAIN BENEFICIAL OWNERS AND MANAGEMENT

         The information required by this item is included under the heading
"Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management" under the
caption "Proposal One -- Election of Directors" in the Company's Notice of
Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement for the Company's annual meeting of
stockholders to be held on February 28, 1997 and is incorporated herein by
reference.

ITEM 13.      CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED TRANSACTIONS

         Not applicable.


                                       18
   19
                                     PART IV

ITEM 14.      EXHIBITS, FINANCIAL STATEMENT SCHEDULES, AND
              REPORTS ON FORM 8-K.

(a)      THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS ARE FILED AS PART OF THIS FORM 10-K ANNUAL
         REPORT:

         1.   Financial Statements

         The following documents are included in the Company's 1996 Annual
         Report to Stockholders and incorporated by reference in Item 8:



                                                                         Page No. in
                                                                         Annual Report

                                                                      
         Report of Independent Auditors                                       29
         Consolidated Statements of Income for the years
           ended September 30, 1994, 1995 and 1996                            30
         Consolidated Balance Sheets at September 30, 1995 and 1996           31
         Consolidated Statements of Stockholders' Equity for            
           the years ended September 30, 1994, 1995 and 1996                  32
         Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows for the years            
           ended September 30, 1994, 1995 and 1996                            33
         Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements                        34-42



         2.   Financial Statement Schedule

         The following schedule of the Company is included herein:

         Valuation and Qualifying Accounts and Reserves (Schedule II)

         All other schedules are omitted because they are not applicable or the
         amounts are immaterial or the required information is presented in the
         consolidated financial statements or notes thereto.

         The following document is included herein:

         Independent Auditors' Report on Financial Statement Schedule of 
         Synopsys, Inc. (page 23)


         3.  Exhibits

         See Item 14(c) below. The following compensatory plans are required to
         be filed as exhibits (and have been incorporated by reference from
         prior filings, as indicated under Item 14 (c)):

         Exhibit 99.1 -- 1992 Stock Option Plan, as restated and amended
         Exhibit 99.2 -- Employee Stock Purchase Program, as restated and
                         amended
         Exhibit 99.3 -- International Employee Stock Purchase Program, as
                         restated and amended


                                       19
   20
(b)      REPORTS ON FORM 8-K

         Not applicable.

(c)      EXHIBITS

Exhibit
Number       Description
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.25        Amendment No. 5 to Lease, dated October 4, 1995, to Lease Agreement
                 dated August 17, 1990, between the Company and John Arrillaga,
                 Trustee, or his successor trustee, UTA dated 7/20/77 (Arrillaga
                 Family Trust), and Richard T. Peery, Trustee, or his successor
                 trustee, UTA dated 7/20/77 (Richard T. Peery Separate Property
                 Trust), as amended(1)

10.26        Amendment No. 3 to Lease, dated October 4, 1995, to Lease Agreement
                 dated June 16, 1992, between the Company and John Arrillaga,
                 Trustee, or his successor trustee, UTA dated 7/20/77 (Arrillaga
                 Family Trust), and Richard T. Peery, Trustee, or his successor
                 trustee, UTA dated 7/20/77 (Richard T. Peery Separate Property
                 Trust), as amended(1)

10.27        Amendment No. 2 to Lease, dated October 4, 1995, to Lease Agreement
                 dated June 23, 1993, between the Company and John Arrillaga,
                 Trustee, or his successor trustee, UTA dated 7/20/77 (Arrillaga
                 Family Trust), and Richard T. Peery, Trustee, or his successor
                 trustee, UTA dated 7/20/77 (Richard T. Peery Separate Property
                 Trust), as amended(1)

10.28        Lease dated January 2, 1996 between the Company and Tarigo-Paul, a 
                 California Limited Partnership(2)

13.1         Portions of the Annual Report to Stockholders for fiscal year ended
                 September 30, 1996, expressly incorporated by reference herein

21.1         Subsidiaries of the Company

23.1         Consent of KPMG Peat Marwick LLP

24.1         Power of Attorney (see page 22)

27           Financial Data Schedule

99.1         1992 Stock Option Plan, as amended and restated(3)

99.2         Employee Stock Purchase Program, as amended and restated(3)

99.3         International Employee Stock Purchase Plan, as amended and 
                 restated(3)


- --------------------
(1)      Incorporated by reference from the Company's Report on Form 10-Q for
         the quarterly period ended December 31, 1995
(2)      Incorporated by reference from the Company's Report on Form 10-Q for
         the quarterly period ended March 31, 1996
(3)      Incorporated by reference from the Company's S-8 registration
         statement, filed on May 3, 1996


                                       20
   21
                                   SIGNATURES

PURSUANT TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE
ACT OF 1934, THE COMPANY HAS DULY CAUSED THIS REPORT TO BE SIGNED ON ITS BEHALF
BY THE UNDERSIGNED, THEREUNTO DULY AUTHORIZED.


                                  SYNOPSYS, INC.
                                
                                
                                
                                  By  /s/ Aart J. de Geus
                                    --------------------------------------------
                                    Aart J. de Geus
                                    President, Chief Executive Officer, and
                                    Director (Principal Executive Officer)

                                
                                  By  /s/ A. Brooke Seawell
                                    --------------------------------------------
                                    A. Brooke Seawell
                                    Senior Vice President, Finance and
                                    Operations, and Chief Financial Officer
                                    (Principal Financial and Accounting Officer)
                               

Date:    December 20, 1996  


                                       21
   22
                                POWER OF ATTORNEY

              KNOW ALL PERSONS BY THESE PRESENTS, that each person whose 
signature appears below constitutes and appoints Aart J. de Geus and A. Brooke
Seawell, and each of them, as his true and lawful attorneys-in-fact and agents,
with full power of substitution and resubstitution, for him and in his name,
place and stead, in any and all capacities, to sign any and all amendments
(including post-effective amendments) to this Report on Form 10-K, and to file
the same, with all exhibits thereto, and other documents in connection
therewith, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, granting unto said
attorneys-in-fact and agents, and each of them, full power and authority to do
and perform each and every act and thing requisite and necessary to be done in
connection therewith, as fully to all intents and purposes as he might or could
do in person, hereby ratifying and confirming all that said attorneys-in-fact
and agents, or any of them, or their or his substitute or substitutes, may
lawfully do or cause to be done by virtue hereof.

         PURSUANT TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934,
THIS REPORT HAS BEEN SIGNED BELOW BY THE FOLLOWING PERSONS ON BEHALF OF THE
REGISTRANT AND IN THE CAPACITIES AND ON THE DATES INDICATED:

     /s/ Harvey C. Jones, Jr.                          
- ---------------------------------------       Chairman of the Board of Directors
Harvey C. Jones, Jr.                                           December 20, 1996


     /s/ Deborah A. Coleman                   Director         December 20, 1996
- ---------------------------------------
Deborah A. Coleman

     /s/ William W. Lattin                    Director         December 20, 1996
- ---------------------------------------
William W. Lattin

     /s/ A. Richard Newton                    Director         December 20, 1996
- ---------------------------------------
A. Richard Newton

     /s/ Steven C. Walske                     Director         December 20, 1996
- ---------------------------------------
Steven C. Walske


                                       22
   23
                          INDEPENDENT AUDITORS' REPORT


To the Board of Directors and 
Stockholders of Synopsys, Inc.:


Under date of October 18, 1996, we reported on the consolidated balance sheets
of Synopsys, Inc. and subsidiaries as of September 30, 1995 and 1996, and the
related consolidated statements of income, stockholders' equity, and cash flows
for each of the years in the three-year period ended September 30, 1996, which
are included in the annual report to stockholders of Synopsys, Inc. In
connection with our audits of the aforementioned consolidated financial
statements, we also audited the related consolidated financial statement
schedule included in the Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 1996 of
Synopsys, Inc. This financial statement schedule is the responsibility of the
Company's management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on this
financial statement schedule based on our audits.

In our opinion, such financial statement schedule, when considered in relation
to the basic consolidated financial statements taken as a whole, presents
fairly, in all material respects, the information set forth therein.


                                                           KPMG Peat Marwick LLP

Palo Alto, California
October 18, 1996


                                       23
   24
                                                                     SCHEDULE II

                                 SYNOPSYS, INC.


                 VALUATION AND QUALIFYING ACCOUNTS AND RESERVES
                                 (in thousands)



                                  Balance at     Additions         Charged                           Balance at
                                  Beginning      Charged to        to Other                          End of
                                  of Period      Income            Accounts(1)     Deductions(2)     Period
                                  ---------      ------            -----------     -------------     ------
Allowance for Doubtful
Accounts and Sales Returns:

                                                                                            
1996                                $2,813         $1,576           $ (334)          $ (394)            $3,661
                                    ------         ------           ------           ------             ------
                                                                                                   
1995                                $1,900         $  688           $  210           $  (15)            $2,813
                                    ------         ------           ------           ------             ------
                                                                                                   
1994                                $1,391         $  443           $   36           $  (30)            $1,900
                                    ------         ------           ------           ------             ------






- --------
(1) Translation and other adjustments.

(2) Accounts written off, net of recoveries.



                                       24