PORTLAND, Oregon, Oct. 5 /TechfocusMedia Newswire/ — Techfocus Media, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEVERGONNAHAPPEN), the world leader in informing and amusing engineers engaged in FPGA design, embedded system development, and IC design, verification, and manufacturing, today announced the sixth anniversary of its charter publication “FPGA Journal.”  FPGA Journal is now read in every civilized country on the globe*, by billions** of professional engineers.  

* our definition of “civilized country” is “one where FPGA Journal is read”

** our definition of “billions” is “not even close to a billion”

“We’re happy to be celebrating six years as the world’s leading publication focused on FPGA and programmable logic technology,” says founder and editor-in-chief Kevin Morris. “Our readers continue to tell us that we’re their most trusted source of information on FPGAs.”

“FPGA Journal is way behind the curve,” says an engineer whose name has been withheld because he is not authorized to speak to the press. “Six years is about four process generations.  If the publication was keeping up with the industry, this year’s FPGA Journal would have sixteen times as many feature articles while using about a quarter of the power of the initial issue.”

“OK, that last guy isn’t one of the ones that said we were trusted,” replied Morris. “He’s a perfect example of the kind of meaningless garbage quotes we skim past every day in press releases – while we work to bring you all the most important trends, technology, tools, and techniques in FPGA design.”

In addition to news, articles, and analysis on FPGAs and FPGA-related products, FPGA Journal has brought you six years of stories, opinions and advice on working as a professional engineer, plus webcasts, white papers, and other important and relevant industry coverage.  Moving forward, FPGA Journal will be expanding even more with a new, re-designed website, more content, new features, social media integration, and 72% more fun than previous generations.

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Six awesome years…

During our six year tenure, we’ve watched FPGAs go from glue to glory – from unsung heroes of the project endgame to core system-on-chip devices.  We’ve seen mainstream SRAM FPGA processes go from 130nm to 90nm to 65nm to 40/45nm, with each subsequent generation bringing us higher density, lower power consumption, lower cost, and a vastly expanded portfolio of possible applications.  We’ve watched the emergence of low-cost and low-power FPGAs and the rise to ubiquity of high-speed serial connectivity.  We’ve seen processors on FPGAs go from marketing hype to well-traveled reality.  We’ve seen design tools go from fairly unsophisticated knock-offs of “real”  ASIC tools to highly sophisticated and integrated suites that can optimize for performance, cost, and even power without requiring the user to have a PhD in synthesisiology.

On the audience side, we’ve seen our readership expand from a close-knit cadre of black-belt LUT-savvy FPGA geeks to a diverse group of engineers from a wide variety of application areas who are looking to learn more about FPGA technology.  Our letters-to-the-editor mailbox stays constantly full – with everything from lavish praise to biting critique to golden opportunities to acquire replica timepieces.  

In the past few years, FPGA Journal has been joined by two sibling publications – Embedded Technology Journal and IC Design and Verification Journal, and, together with those publications, we’ve worked to set the new standard in trade journalism.  Our approach has been to bring old-school values of editorial integrity, expert analysis, and responsible research together with new-media efficiency and speed.  While our industry has crumbled around us, our publications have continued to grow and thrive, convincing us that our “audience-first” approach to creating high-quality, relevant, original content makes both good business and good ethical sense.

Next year, you’ll see a dramatic upgrade in FPGA Journal as well as in our other publications.  We’re giving our websites and newsletters a major facelift (although we’re betting it won’t look like we’ve “had work done”), adding significant new content, upgrading our servers, and adding an array of new distribution mechanisms including robust social media connections, enhanced mobile device support, on-demand technical resources, and much more.  We’ll be sneak previewing some of our new stuff in just a few weeks, so stay tuned and don’t be shy – we want your input and feedback.

As much as things change, they’ll also be staying the same.  We’ll continue to bring you our take on all the latest announcements of devices, design tools, IP, applications, development kits, and design techniques. When marketing hype masquerades as new technology, we’ll be there to pull back the curtain. When cool innovations come from sequestered start-ups, we’ll find them.  When you come to us with interesting and detailed stories about your latest FPGA-based design project and brief us so we can write engaging peer-to-peer articles, allowing us to share your creative accomplishments with the rest of our audience – we’ll wake up from our daydream just in time to see your PR and legal department people lead you handcuffed and gagged from the briefing room.  Then, we’ll fall back asleep as the vendor’s marketing person replaces you and begins droning on and on about how “users” are “leveraging” their “advanced portfolio of… zzzzz”  

We are extremely grateful to you, our audience for the six wonderful years you’ve given us so far.  You have our pledge that we’ll do our best to continue to serve you – regardless of where the industry and technology take us.

We are also grateful to our awesome (and still growing) team whose dedication, creativity, professionalism, and plain old hard work have made it possible for us to ride the waves, weather the storms, and end up in the enviable position we enjoy today. We could not do it without you.