Bluespec

= a software tool developed at MIT for designing and testing circuits

Description

"Bluespec, a software tool developed at MIT for designing and testing circuits, is one of the advances making life easier for open-source-hardware engineers. Jamey Hicks '87, SM '88, PhD '92, director of the Nokia Research Center in Cambridge, uses Bluespec to collaborate with MIT students to build designs for next-generation cell-phone radios and open-source video decoders--chips that decompress video for display on cell phones and other mobile devices. The beauty of Bluespec, says Hicks, is that you can essentially "program" a circuit design using sets of preëxisting instructions. "For educational purposes, it's useful to have preëxisting designs available just like those that are available in software," he says. "If you have a starting point to build on, you can get more done." (http://www.technologyreview.com/article/21495/page4/)