SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — CriticalBlue Ltd., a provider of tools for coprocessor synthesis, has closed its second round of funding with $3.7 million. The funds will be used to expand global sales and support for CriticalBlue's Cascade product, according to the company.

CriticalBlue (Edinburgh, Scotland) introduced Cascade in May 2004. Cascade takes applications software and synthesizes a hardware coprocessor that accelerates software tasks chosen by the user. It thus offers a middle ground between building custom hardware and putting functionality in embedded software on a standard processor.

According to David Stewart, CEO of CriticalBlue, the funds will be used for the next phase of the company's development. He said CriticalBlue has just signed its first large customer in Japan, and has added local technical support resources in both Japan and the U.S. Cascade, he noted, is used in applications such as printers, cameras, wireless devices, telecom encryption and audio/video.

The second-round funding was led by Herald Ventures and supported by existing investors Pentech Ventures and LanzaTech Ventures, in addition to Silicon Valley angel investors. "Clear feedback from customer engagements supports the view that the transparency and effectiveness of CriticalBlue's Cascade technology provides a powerful answer to the need for application-specific multiprocessing platforms," said Lucio Lanza, president of LanzaTech Ventures and a CriticalBlue board member, in a statement.

CriticalBlue received its first-round funding of $2 million in October 2003.