The team at Bluewater Systems is proud to announce that we have won two awards as part of the recent  2011 Deloitte Fast 50 – celebrating the 50 fastest growing companies in New Zealand.

Bluewater Systems received awards for 29^th Fastest Growing Company in New Zealand, as well as Fastest Growing Technology Company – Canterbury and Upper South Island Region, with a growth of 283% over the last financial year.

Bluewater Systems also received a placing in the /Deloitte Technology Fast 500 – Asia Pacific/, with a ranking of 188 out of 500.

We would like to thank all of our staff, clients and suppliers for supporting us throughout the recent turbulent times, as without strong support on all fronts, we know this fantastic growth would not be possible.

Fujitsu Semiconductor have announced a new range of products in their existing FM3 range of Cortex-M3 processors. The 54 new high-performance chips bring the total product range up to 160 products, covering a wide range of possible applications. These new processors include move the processing speed from 80MHz up to 144MHz, and include peripherals such as Ethernet and CAN, as well as new improvements such as zero wait state NOR flash for fast execution, and flexible power supplys from 2.7v to 5.5v, allowing for better integration into industrial and noisy environments.

For futher details, see here.

Texas Instruments have announced a new processor range in their Sitara family - the AM335x. These Cortex-A8 devices contain a familiar range of features, such as a 720MHz core, OpenGL 3D acceleration, Gigabit Ethernet and DDR 1/2/3 support. However the announcement of the $5USD pricing (in 100k quantities) will allow these processors to be used in a new range of cheap devices, bringing superior performance to a larger market segment.

Together with this announcement was the release of the new BeagleBone from TI. Similar to the BeagleBoard, this $89USD development kit sports one of the new AM335x processors, with an easy credit-card sized form factor.

Based on the support that the BeagleBoard and PandaBoard have received from the community, the BeagleBone looks to be an excellent addition, with a very nice price point.

For further details on the AM335x release see .

For further details on the BeagleBone release see .