In his new position, Arai will see to drive the company's growth and provide optimal support for Japanese customers. In more precise terms, he will be responsible for overseeing Synfora's sales, marketing, as well as support and business development activities in Japan.

"Japan has been at the forefront of adopting high level synthesis tools to solve the productivity problem for designing and verifying complex SoCs and FPGAs, and Synfora has seen tremendous growth in the adoption of its PICO C synthesis tools in Japan over the past couple of years," stated Simon Napper, president and CEO of Synfora.

Arai was the first employee of Synplicity KK and built the Japanese market for FPGA synthesis as president of Synplicity KK from 2000 to 2008. Previously, KK, he was head of sales at Mentor Graphics Japan and country manager in Japan for Compass Design Automation.

Earlier this month, Synfora appointed EDA expert Andrew Haines as vice president marketing and signed a distribution agreement with Israel-based Satris Group. These initiatives aimed at promoting its PICO high level synthesis platform.