Waltham, MA – April 1, 2010 – Bluespec, Inc. announced today that it can no longer designate as exclusions people having pre-existing conditions and deny them treatment.  The Health Care Bill recently signed into legislation requires that Bluespec support all engineers, regardless of previous experiences and their associated afflictions, even if caused by their own unfortunate lifestyle choices.

Whether suffering from toxic exposure to the notion of using sequential languages for hardware design, agonizing under an irrational obsession with paralyzing control-data flow graphs, or enduring delusional expectations that C/C++-based hardware design will ever work sufficiently well for anything more than loop-and-array block-level applications, engineers can no longer be denied relief at Bluespec.

Despite its apprehension about the prospects of dealing with all of the emotional and physiological damage, Bluespec is heartened by many user testimonials*, e.g.:

“I’ve suffered from Trebuchet Foot for many years.  Simple things like pulling everything together and getting to the market take forever.  I’m so happy to finally get the Bluespec treatment — it will make a huge difference.”

“When I looked up the symptoms for Sea-to-Silicosis, a lack of predictability and a long tail trying to converge to specification, the diagnosis made perfect sense for my real world pains.

The evaluation had been deceptively quick, but as it was small, perhaps it was not representative in retrospect.  Bluespec is the medicine the doctor ordered.”

“This Fortissimovirus has been killing me.  I’d caught this bug early on, but I now realize that it’s got many of the same issues as Verilogorrhea, just with fancier clothes.”

“I can’t wait to rid myself of these Picobes.  I’d lost all visibility, making it hard to get my job done.  Although I’d assumed that a common language would have made this easy, I’m now dependent on an expert to make headway and I’m still not getting it done.  I can’t wait for Bluespec so that I can do things much faster and by myself.”

Bluespec has also received sponsorship from the Gates Foundation to focus on a certain chronic condition called “The Blub Syndrome”.  Although it has existed as long as computer languages have, it was clearly articulated and given a name in a seminal scientific article in the early 2000s (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html).  It describes a particular kind of “Situational Upstream Myopia” that afflicts many in the industry, and is now reaching epidemic proportions, sufficient to make it into a public health hazard.

Bluespec is instituting an immediate rehab program to those who were in danger of being lost at C.  The CDC in Atlanta, which recommends against using C for hardware design, has applauded the move as timely and courageous.

* All testimonials are fictional, but are read by real actors and actresses.

April Fools!

An explanation and history of April Fools’ Day can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools’_Day.

Contact George Harper, Bluespec’s vice president of marketing, for more details. He can be reached at (781) 250-2200 or via email at info@bluespec.com.

About Bluespec

Bluespec provides the only general-purpose, high-level synthesis toolset for any use model (models, testbenches, production IP) and design type (datapath, control, interconnect). Models and testbenches can be synthesized along with legacy IP to leverage emulation much earlier in the development cycle. Users get better chips to market sooner by developing software in parallel and validating architectures well before tapeout. Bluespec is the only synthesis tool built on atomic transactions, proven technology for managing and simplifying large-scale hardware concurrency. More information can be found on www.bluespec.com or by calling (781) 250-2200.

Fairview, PA – March 31, 2010 – Spectrum Advanced Specialty Products announces the addition of MIL-PRF-49470 approval for Switch Mode Power Supply capacitors to its extensive military QPL offerings. Spectrum’s SMP capacitors have better performance than tantalum or aluminum electrolytic capacitors, featuring low ESR and ESL. These capacitors, available in industry-standard or custom case sizes, are all made in Spectrum’s established MIL-STD-70 ceramic facility located in State College, PA.

Spectrum’s Switch Mode Power Supply capacitors are excellent for input/output filtering for military and high reliability power supplies and high capacitance discharge units. Functioning at high frequencies or high power, these capacitors have a capacitance of up to 47 µF, with tolerances of 5%, 10% or 20%. The capacitor is designed to withstand temperatures ranging from -55°C to +125°C, making it an ideal choice for a broad range of environments. To help safeguard the device from thermal and mechanical stresses, the capacitor is offered in through-hole or surface mount leaded configurations of N, J or L. Additionally, BP, BX, BR or BQ ceramics are available, all able to withstand voltages ranging from 50 to 500 VDC.

The MIL-PRF-49470 qualified Switch Mode Power Supply product adds to the already wide range of Spectrum QPL listings. With the largest number of MIL-PRF-15733, MIL-PRF-28861 and legacy 87106, DSCC 84084 and MIL-C-11015 products, Spectrum is considered a primary supplier for many aircraft, ship and weapons programs maintained by NATO defense branches. Spectrum is also an ideal choice for competitively priced drop-in replacement and repair products.

As a trusted military partner, Spectrum ensures the quality and reliability of each QPL product through its unique in-house testing capabilities. With both EMC and environmental testing, Spectrum offers the most comprehensive EMI evaluation and design resource available. Testing capabilities include environmental stress screening (ESS), analytical circuit design, surge testing and mechanical shock resistance testing. All testing results are integrated into the design process, resulting in an optimum product that will withstand even the harshest environments.

About Spectrum Advanced Specialty Products:

Spectrum Advanced Specialty Products produces coaxial filters & interconnects, advanced ceramics, antennas & assemblies, specialty connectors & harnessing and power filters & film modules. Spectrum Advanced Specialty Products is a Spectrum Control Business.

About Spectrum Control:

Spectrum Control, an ISO 9001:2000 certified company, is comprised of four businesses: Advanced Specialty Products, Sensors and Controls, Power Management Systems, and Microwave Components and Systems.

Spectrum Microwave produces a wide range of microwave components and systems. Products include microwave filters, amplifiers, mixers, voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO’s), dielectric resonator oscillators (DRO’s) and a wide range of RF & microwave systems & assemblies.

Spectrum Sensors & Controls Precision Positioning Sensors Operation produces potentiometers and position sensors including rotary, motorized, hollow shaft, linear and fader types, as well as element segments and custom assemblies. The company’s Advanced Thermal Products Operation produces temperature sensing probes and assemblies, PTC and NTC thermistors and resistive temperature detectors (RTD’s).

Spectrum Power Management Systems produces AC and DC power distribution and remote management systems. Power solutions include off-the-shelf products as well as customized products or systems designed to suit specific user requirements.

Halstenbek, Germany – April 1st 2010. TEWS TECHNOLOGIES announces the introduction of the TCP631, a user-programmable FPGA-based cPCI module with 1,500,000 or 5,000,000 system gates. Designed for industrial, COTS, and transportation applications, where specialized I/O or long-term availability is required, the TCP631 provides a number of advantages including a customizable interface for unique applications and a FPGA-based design to extend product lifecycle.

For flexible front I/O solutions, the TCP631 provides a PIM Module slot that allows active and passive signal conditioning. With the TPIM003-10 all I/O signals are provided on a HD68 connector. The TCP631-2x also offers rear I/O via the J2 connector.

The TCP631 offers 64 I/O lines to the front I/O and 64 I/O lines to the rear I/O. All I/O lines are directly connected to the FPGA-pins, which maintains the flexibility of the Select I/O technology of the Spartan III FPGA. All I/O lines provide external ESD-protection devices. In addition the FPGA is connected to two banks of 128 Mbytes, 16 bit wide DDR2 SDRAM.

The FPGA is configured by a serial Flash. The Flash device is in-system programmable via driver software over the PCI bus. An in-circuit debugging option is available via an optionally mounted JTAG header on the backside of the board for readback and real-time debugging of the FPGA design using Xilinx’s “ChipScope”.

A programmable clock generator provides up to four different clock output frequencies between 5 kHz and 200 MHz. All outputs are available at the FPGA – in addition, one clock source is used as the local clock signal for the PCI controller. The clock generator settings are stored in an EEPROM and can be changed by the driver software through the PCI Target Controller.
The configuration EEPROM of the PCI Target Controller can also be modified by the driver software to adapt address spaces and other critical parameters.
User applications can be developed using the design software ISE WebPACK which can be downloaded free of charge from www.xilinx.com.

Extensive software support for major operating systems such as Windows, LynxOS, Linux, Integrity, VxWorks, and QNX is available.

About TEWS TECHNOLOGIES

TEWS TECHNOLOGIES is a leading solutions provider of embedded I/O and CPU products based on open architecture standards such as PMC, IndustryPack® (IP), CompactPCI, standard PCI, AMC, and VME. TEWS has more than 30 years of experience designing and building turn-key embedded interface solutions using the philosophy to listen and respond to our customers needs. Using this customer first approach, TEWS has developed a large number of standard and custom products for applications in industrial control, telecommunication infrastructure, medical equipment, traffic control and COTS. TEWS line of embedded I/O solutions is available worldwide through a global network of distributors. For more information, go to www.tews.com.