bmc::labs is short for Bare Metal Computing Laboratories. The separator :: in between is a nod to namespace notation in C++ and Rust. In this article, I explain where this name comes from and why bmc::labs exists in the first place. In a way: its vision and mission.

about me

I’m Florian, Head of Engineering. I became fascinated with computer science and programming early and started getting paid for writing code in uni. I gained a lot of experience working in Formula Student and now professional motorsports - experience in automotive engineering, project management and leadership. In computer science, my interests have always been in the “bare metal” area: systems development, embedded systems and high performance computing were and are what I get excited about. There’s a leitmotif here, and it is: if it needs performance, reliability and solid engineering, I’m into it.

the name

For me, it was always a dream to build a company from the ground up. I’m not sure why, but there’s always been this fascination of “doing your own thing” for me. In the end, I kind of grew into it from freelancing, which is also how I met my partners - Camilla and Sebastian have been with me from the start of bmc::labs. All that was missing was a good name for the electronics and software engineering company I envisioned.

It needed to be a name reflective of my interests, to help me stay the course. A cool sounding name, which would work also in shortened form. Something simple, yet recognizable. It was to be attractive enough to be remembered by people who do not understand the meaning, to visually reference programming - preferably in C++ or Rust. And I liked the idea of having something writable as text, no vector graphics needed, to make life easier. Something minimalistic.

I had liked the sound of “something labs” for a while, and I enjoy a good acronym as much as the next guy, so I was looking for something “three lettery” to stick in front of “labs”. It did not take long for the name bmc::labs to emerge in my head: the short form sounds cool and recognizable, and Bare Metal Computing Laboratories sounds bad ass. It has bare metal computing inside which signifies both the passion of working close to the bare metal and doing computing efficiently. And the term laboratories signifies that we do research and prototyping, we do experiments and reporting and - added benefit - it has something of a mad professor vibe.

My friend and our UI design advisor Max created the logo, the icon and the colour gradient as we’re using it today. The font of the logo is an Source Sans Pro Black 900 - no graphics needed. The icon is used whenever something square is needed, the logo in all other occasions. That’s it, plain and simple.

the vision

The vision statement of bmc::labs reads as follows:

Software based technology has without a doubt had a substantial impact on the lives of billions of humans over the last few decades. The next major challenge is now to make these technologies sustainable - technologically, economically and ecologically. We want to be a contributor and driver of this transition.

This might seem a bit odd for a company contracting projects from - among other areas - motorsports. We are working on other projects more focused around ecological sustainability - more on that in later articles. More importantly, however, technological sustainability - or in other words engineering with the avoidance of technical debt as a design goal - and economical sustainability are interesting problems in all areas of development.

the mission

The mission statement of bmc::labs reads as follows:

Through our products we want to enable sustainability in the development of technological products with a software component, reaching from control and data acquisition devices to “smart devices”. Sustainability in this context means the reduction of development time at start up and making it easy to avoid technical debt as well as reducing the ecological footprint of electronics.

This is thoroughly reflected in our approach to every project or product. We don’t do throw-away, we don’t do quick-fix or dirty-trick - we do solid, we do sustainable, we do efficient. We optimize computational efficiency and reliability by knowing the bare metal, by using the right programming languages, and by testing thoroughly.

focus

Internally, when we talk about ongoing projects or potential future ones, we often justify efforts by saying but we said we’d do it properly, or yes, that product exists already, but it doesn’t have to be new - it has to be done properly. If nothing else - forget about the marketing talk, and remember this: bmc::labs is committed to doing it properly.

in short: solid engineering. sustainable code.

we.are.#baremetal