SpecC Consortium Announced at Embedded Technology Conference and Exhibition MST '99

10 November, 1999


Applications for new consortium accepted from today

SpecC Technology Open Consortium

Tokyo, Japan -- Industry leaders in embedded software, EDA, IP and systems today announced establishment of the SpecC Technology Open Consortium, an international forum for promoting the SpecC language and methodology. The new consortium will seek to enhance the development and design process for electronic products through promotion SpecC language, a new specification description language. It will establish a SpecC-based system-design methodology that enables smooth, accelerated specifications exchanges during the product development process, from the specification phase to final design phase. The new methodology is expected to achieve significant productivity gains in development of electronics products, including communications equipment, portable products, multimedia equipment and set-top boxes.

Originally developed at University of California, Irvine, SpecC language--specification description language based on C--represents the fruits of many years of research and sponsorship and collaboration by numerous Fortune 100 companies, industry consortiums and universities. Key sponsors include Toshiba Corporation and Hitachi, Ltd. The language is designed to support smooth overall integration of product development, from determining specifications to design implementation. SpecC language allows the same semantics and syntax to be used to represent specifications in a conceptual system, in hardware and software and, most importantly, in intermediate specifications and information during hardware and software co-design stages.

The newly-established consortium aims to promote higher productivity in product development by securing wide acceptance of a SpecC language-based methodology that enhances development integration of the development process and that overcomes constraints on time-to-market and cost.

Conventional product development relies on natural languages, such as English or Japanese, to describe specifications from the product planning phase to the system implementation design phase. The result is ambiguity and vagueness that renders it difficult to maintain consistent specifications between phases.

SpecC language directly addresses the issue of smooth integration of development phases. Its writes executable specifications at the specification design level, supporting inter-phase consistency and reducing ambiguity. The result is a clear, well-established design process, from specification to implementation, with far fewer misses in communication between design divisions. This process also allows customer views and demands, marketing goals and designer expertise to be evaluated and analyzed at significantly less cost in time and resources and to be quickly incorporated into the final product.

The pace of innovation and intense competition in technology development prevents any single company from establishing design process language, methodology and tools. Bringing real solutions to designers' desks requires that systems and parts companies are able to exchange and trade specifications, and the interoperability of development and design tool from leading tool vendors. SpecC language clears the way forward by achieving just this.

The establishment of the SpecC Technology Open Consortium as an open community will promote collaboration among companies in the systems, semiconductor, IP, components and tool industries, and facilitate emergence of a de facto standard language and interchange format for system specification design using SpecC language. Integration of specifications and design steps in the SOC design process in SpecC methodology will be also achieved.

The SpecC Technology Open Consortium is the first organization of its kind in the electronics industry to promise the establishment of a de facto standard that consistently unites product specifications and implementation. It activities are expected to bring broad productivity gains to the industry: in Japan alone, over 200,000 engineers working on embedded software and about 10,000 system LSI engineers will benefit from evolutionary productivity gains.

Initially, Toshiba Corporation will provide the consortium with a secretariat, and its office will be located at Soliton Systems, K.K, in Tokyo, Japan. Applications from potential new members will be received from today, and broad support is anticipated from leading embedded software tool vendors, EDA vendors, systems companies, universities, and research facilities. More than 20 organizations are already members.

Activities of SpecC Technology Open Consortium will be publicized at the consortium's web site at http://www.SpecC.gr.jp, where users can review the introduction of SpecC technology, and the consortium's activities and research results.

Press Contacts:
Corporate Communications Office, Toshiba Corporation
03 (3457) 2100

SpecC Technology Open Consortium: Operation
03(3457)4492

For applications:
SpecC Technology Open Consortium Office
Address: c/o LSI & System Bus Operation, Soliton Systems K.K.
2-4-3 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0022 JAPAN
TEL 03 (5360) 3851 FAX 03 (3356) 6440 E-Mail info_SpecC@lsi.soliton.co.jp WWW http://www.SpecC.gr.jp/


Overview of SpecC* Technology Open Consortium
SpecC Technology Open Consortium: Endorsements (Alphabetical Order)


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