Near the turn on the millennium I was the lead on a project called JBits. It was a full end to end software development environment for Xilinx FPGAs. It was very unusual at the time and supported high level language design as well as run time reconfiguration, things still difficult to do today.

The project was never commercialized, mostly due to the bad economic environment after Y2K and then 9/11. But over the years I have run into people, mostly at technical conferences, who were fans. Odd to see a 20 year old software project getting recognition, but this week at FCCM JBits received an award for contributions to the field. Nice to be remembered especially in a field that changes so fast and where so much gets forgotten.