BLUESPEC DECRIES INDUSTRY OBSESSION WITH ESL AS XENOPHOBIC

– English is not an EDA panacea for chip design challenges –

Waltham, Mass. – April 1, 2005 – Bluespec Inc., www.bluespec.com, developer of the only behavioral synthesis solution for control logic and complex datapaths, announced today that it can no longer sit silently by while the EDA industry standardizes everyone on English. The EDA industry is pushing ESL, an acronym for English as a Second Language, as the next important initiative for chip design. Bluespec firmly believes that chip designers should feel comfortable in their native languages, even in the face of conflicting, jingoistic agendas by key industry analysts and market leaders, notably all based in the U.S.

ESL Programs
There has oddly been tremendous confusion and debate about the meaning of ESL. But, it is a well known acronym with a very clear meaning – millions upon millions of people have attended ESL classes, perhaps with some sadly misguided hope that Baywatch might have greater meaning without subtitles (or perhaps just so the subtitles won’t ‘get in the way’). There can be no doubt that English has ‘crossed the chasm’, with over a billion speakers around the world – it may even be becoming a lingua franca – but that doesn’t justify an unabashed push to convert the rest under the banner of better chip design.

This industry initiative demonstrates a lack of creativity to solve real problems coupled with desperation to show action. Recognizing that there is a global push to offshore chip design to teams in Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Seychelles, Jamaica, etc. does not mean that one should throw up one’s hands and push ESL in an effort to communicate with those engineering teams. Besides, why start now? The “mushroom” treatment for engineers has been the preferred management style for all these years. What is wrong with leaving those engineers to themselves, to talk (or not) among themselves, with only the occasional airing?

"A single language is not the panacea for chip design’s challenges. EDA needs to focus instead on solutions that deliver material improvements to the development process," said Bluespec’s spokesperson, attempting the precise diction of Professor ‘enry ‘iggins. “It takes the creativity of a flea to propose an effective alternative. How about this for an idea: why don’t we focus instead on designing above RTL for better productivity and quality? Bluespec has the only solution that can synthesize control logic and complex datapaths from a high-level design specification – if we could just get people off their preoccupation with distractions like conjugation, we could make some real progress.”

Ignores Native English Speaking Engineers
Of course, the main flaw in the ESL initiative is that it summarily ignores the needs of purportedly native English speaking American, Canadian, Australian, and UK-based engineers. While ‘Shall We Dance’ classes abound to offer a second dimension socially, ESL by definition is not applicable to these engineers. Remedial English coursework is appropriate for many, but the EDA powers-at-be have chosen to paper over this gap. If we persist in this course, with ESL, non-native English speakers may speak better English than the native born. How will we secure our beaches then?

Tried Before and Failed
As philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is not the first time that a single language has been pushed – and the outcome will undoubtedly be the same. One need only think back to, “Behold, they are one people, and they have one language…Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." By pushing English as the only language, we are only tempting higher forces. Do we really want to wind up on the ‘Daily Show’?

ESL as a Bar to Progress
ESL, coupled with the current unstoppable drive towards standardization, erects an unnecessary barrier to progress. Languages develop only through proprietary extensions, a process completely anathema to ESL. Bluespec, of course, accepts that extensions should not be accepted willy-nilly; but criteria such as semantic content and usefulness to the design and communication process, enable one to distinguish between extensions such as “I was like, oh my God, wow” and “O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention”.

ESL as a Weapon of Exploitation
Bluespec foresees marketing managers, a.k.a. the source of all evil, shamelessly taking advantage of ESL to procure unrealistic schedules from offshore engineers. And, using that information, to threaten even more offshoring! Is the day far off when a marketing manager uses the ambiguity of English to extract more features from an engineering team within the same resources and schedule? Won’t we all be much better off having specification review meetings when the specs are written in Bulgarian?

“This has clearly gotten out of hand,” said one unnamed EDA analyst, who had once been complimented for her speaking skills despite English being her native tongue. “It would be great if people could focus on the real problems in this industry rather than assume everyone just came from their ESL class.”

April Fools.

About Bluespec
Bluespec Inc. manufactures an industry standards-based Electronic Design Automation (EDA) toolset that significantly raises the level of abstraction for hardware design while retaining the ability to automatically synthesize high quality RTL, without compromising speed, power or area. The toolset, the only one focused on control and complex datapaths, allows ASIC and FPGA designers to significantly reduce design time, bugs and re-spins that contribute to product delays and escalating costs. More information can be found on www.bluespec.com or by calling 781-250-2200.

Copyright 2005 Bluespec, Inc. Bluespec is a trademark of Bluespec, Inc. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.

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