Bluespec is the Synthesizable Modeling Company(tm). With Bluespec, models and testbenches can be synthesized along with legacy IP to employ emulation much earlier for modeling, verification and early software development. Bluespec makes emulation much easier, more affordable, and deployable from concept to volume silicon. We refer to these capabilities as Bluespec 2.0: running models and verification at 10s of MHz:

• Think about eliminating the modeling-to-RTL gap
• Think about removing the simulation bottleneck

You may have thought that Bluespec was solely about a better design alternative than RTL. And, yes, we’ve been about that. Leading chip companies have completed many successful tapeouts with Bluespec, the industry’s only general-purpose, high-level synthesis toolset for design implementation. But, our customers also wanted us to solve even bigger challenges such as validating specifications, accelerating firmware/driver development, reducing verification efforts and making architectural tradeoffs:

• Can you emulate your specification 6 weeks after it is complete?
• Can you write a synthesizable transactor for a complex interface, such as PCIe, in 7 weeks with 2 engineers? What about synthesizable test benches?
• Can you explore 24 micro-architectures in a week for better power optimization of algorithms (or controllers, even systems)?
• What about easier-to-use and much more affordable emulation, even on every desktop?

Bluespec 2.0 leverages Bluespec's current tools and very special, patented and proven complex concurrency technology, atomic transactions, to solve problems that existing modeling and RTL solutions cannot.  Used by the world's leading semiconductor and systems companies, Bluespec's silicon-proven high-level synthesis toolsets for ASICs and FPGAs enable:

• Fast accurate modeling – design teams are using Bluespec to execute their hardware accurate models orders-of-magnitude faster than possible in software on multi-core processors
  
• Architectural exploration and modeling – design teams are using Bluespec for early software models and rapid architectural refinement and exploration
  
• FPGA Prototyping and Emulation – design teams are using Bluespec to develop high-level testbenches, transactors and models that are automatically synthesized into FPGA prototypes or emulators for orders-of-magnitude faster verification and modeling on lower cost platforms
  
• System and IP design – design teams have consistently achieved at least a 2X productivity improvement over RTL on their first projects and are benefitting from extreme reuse and a fraction of the bugs of RTL design.

Bluespec's customers are choosing BSV for hardware design because it provides C++/Java-like levels of abstraction and clean semantics without obscuring architecture. BSV designers retain predictability and controllability over architecture, which is, in the end, the most important driver of implementation quality. This makes Bluespec the industry's only general-purpose, high-level synthesis solution that can handle any level of abstraction and any module type, including system interconnect, datapath and complex control.

Bluespec integrates seamlessly into existing verification, debug and synthesis flows, including Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor and Magma, without requiring new methodologies or tools.

Backgrounder

Founded
June, 2003

Headquarters
Bluespec, Inc.
3 Speen Street, Suite 100
Framingham, MA 01701
(directions)

Main: 781-250-2200
Fax: 781-684-1199
Email: info@bluespec.com

Investors
Atlas Venture: Waltham, MA; London, UK; Munich, Germany; and Paris, France

North Bridge Venture Partners: Waltham, MA

Funding
Bluespec has raised $17.25 million in three rounds of financing since inception.

Target Customers
Bluespec’s customers are system, silicon, IP and design services companies with requirements for developing complex ASIC and FPGA designs.

Management Team
Charlie Hauck, President and Chief Executive Officer

Rishiyur Nikhil, Chief Technical Officer

George Harper, Vice President, Marketing

Arklin Kee, Vice President, Business Development

Board of Directors
Charlie Hauck, President and Chief Executive Officer

Arvind, Professor, MIT

Brian McAloon, former group vice president, DSP, Media and Communications Products for Analog Devices

Axel Bichara, Senior Principal, Atlas Venture

Jeff McCarthy, General Partner, North Bridge Venture Partners