Many distributors, due to the lack of supportive technical staff, are only able to offer very little, if any, supportive technical backup service that the latest, most highly sophisticated products require. This is according to Pretoria-based firm, Parsec Components which claims that its uniqueness is evident in its ability to service the South African electronics market with knowledge-intensive components and software, backed by a high level of technical expertise.

For the year 2000, the company is in the fortunate position of having a team of committed, highly qualified, competent and supportive electronic engineers in addition to an efficient and competent support staff at its disposal. No longer a fledgling company, its progress along the learning curve has accelerated over the past year, it says and has gained a reputation for cutting edge technology. It further offers expertise in the design of products and services that include or utilise these components and software. The company has built up a large client base throughout South Africa, which include smaller specialised users of Parsec products as well as high-volume buyers.

The company also offers training courses that promote the use of programmable logic devices and VHDL methodology. Petrus Pelser is associated with specialised training in digital design and VHDL. The company maintains close ties with a number of academic institutions in South Africa and says its engineers are often called upon to give lectures or run training courses. The advantage of this is two-fold. On the one hand the company keeps abreast of the latest state-of-the-art technology and trends and secondly, they become acquainted with the top electronic engineering students who are about to enter the workplace.

A quarterly newsletter called Parsec Primer is produced by the company. In this publication Parsec says it primes or equips its readers with information pertaining to products produced by each principal. Technical problems are addressed and technical information included that Parsec feels its readers will find useful.

Parsec has the support of its principals in the form of sponsorship of a stand at the bi-annual ADEC Trade Show. It believes that seminars and/or a one-day conference serve as excellent means of promoting products, ususally with the support of a technical FAE or speaker from the principals. Later in the year Parsec plans to host an Altera seminar in Pretoria and Cape Town.

The following is a list of the companies Parsec Components represents in South Africa:

Altera Corporation is a leader in high performance, high-density programmable logic devices and associated computer aided engineering (CAE) logic development tools. Altera offers a broad line of CMOS programmable logic devices that address high speed, high-density and lower power applications. Its products serve a broad range of markets, including telecommunications, computers and industrial applications.

Axiom Technology is a developer of software products for high performance multiprocessor systems. Axiom is a solution provider of PC-based industrial automation and offers products which include single board computers, embedded PCs and industrial computer chassis and workstations.

Analog Devices is a leading manufacturer of precision high performance ICs used in analog and digital signal processing. It offers leadership products in analog, mixed-signal, and DSP. Analog Devices designs, manufactures and markets a broad line of high-performance linear, mixed-signal and digital ICs that address a wide range of real-world signal processing applications. Principal products include system-level ICs and general purpose, standard product linear ICs. Other products are hybrids.

Mentor Graphics provides electronic hardware and software design solutions to telecommunications, automotive, consumer electronics, computer, semiconductor and aerospace companies. Mentor Graphics is known for its Renoir product which has interface and tool bars that are intuitive and familiar, enabling even first-time HDL designers to quickly generate powerful and efficient code. Model Technology (MTI) is now part of Mentor Graphics. Its products are said to be the standard by which other VHDL simulation/debugger providers are measured, and serves a broad range of PLD, FPGA, ASIC and system-level designers

PLX Technology is a leading supplier of high performance interface chips for the PCI bus, and is the world leader in PCI to local bus bridge chips for the communications, networking and industrial embedded markets. OEM customers use PLX PCI chips in a wide variety of PCI applications, including standard PC and workstation PCI add-in boards, embedded PCI communication systems such as switches and industry standard industrial PCI implementations such as Compact PCI, PMC and Small PCI.

Raisonance offers a comprehensive range of development tools for 8051, 251 and XA embedded control applications, from test and integration support, including a C Compiler (80C51), to high level debuggers. Raisonance provides very powerful development tools, dedicated to embedded applications. One product is WEdit, a fully featured and integrated development environment that provides smooth seamless access to all the tools in the professional developer's arsenal. WEdit can manage all aspects of product development for any member of the 8051, 80C251 or 80C51ZA and more.

Synplicity is a leading supplier of engineering software tools for the creation of electronic systems and integrated circuits using top-down design methodologies. It has a reputation for manufacturing the world's best VHDL compilers. Synplicity is known for its Synplify, a software product to implement designs using synthesis. Synplify generates optimised netlists for all the major FPGA and CPLD vendors. This support includes 18 unique architectures.

Sundance Multiprocessor Technology's product portfolio includes a range of DSP processor boards and specialised DSP modules for data acquisition and vector processing. Based on the Inmos Transputer, TMS320C4x and the advanced TMS320C6x, Sundance TRAM and TIM modules are capable of implementing most complex processing tasks at a surprisingly low cost. High- performance computers and DSPs are increasingly being used to address a diverse range of automation tasks. The applications that benefit include realtime control, robotics, image-processing and pattern recognition. Parsec engineers have designed a number of Sundance boards and modules.

ImageCraft Creation specialises in software consulting and the supply of quality ANSI C compilers - available for Motorola's MC68HC11, HC12 and MC16 microcontrollers; NoICE11 debugger for the HC11; BASIC-11 compiler with Windows IDE and integrated debugger for HC11 E2 single chip; HC 11w/XC6875 and HC11 w external RAM, as well as hardware: HC12 Welcome Kit and HC 12 Compact Kit.

KRFTech supplies the device driver development kit that can quickly create hardware access applications without writing complicated kernel code-without any performance degradation. WinDriver is a device driver development toolkit designed to let one write hardware access applications without wasting time on operating system internals.

Eonic Software produces Virtuoso realtime software development-tools for embedded systems, as well as Atlas high reliability systems solutions for embedded applications.

Diamond 3L targets special-purpose hardware that is optimised for multi-processor DSP applications: radar, sonar, telecommunications, image and other signal processing. Its main product is a multi-processor realtime operating system (RTOS) that targets DSP boards based on Analog Devices, SHARC, Texas Instruments' TMS320C4x and Texas Instruments' TMS320C6x .

Parsec Components says the main reason for its competitive edge is the fact that its engineers continually strive for excellence. The company says it also has a strong technical sales and consulting team and is perceived as a company that provides outstanding service and products.

Information from Parsec Components. For further information about any of these products or for technical assistance, contact: Petrus van Heerden, Chris du Toit or Ben van der Schyff, (012) 349 2282, petrusvh @parsec.co.za, chris@parsec.co.za or ben@parsec.co.za