The sudden rush by artificial intelligence software companies like Carnegie Group to rewrite all their development tools in C so that they can run on the generality of supermicros dealt a body blow to the specialist artificial intelligence computer manufacturers like Symbolics Inc: the Cambridge, Massachusetts company is laying off 160 people, 17% of its workforce, and those going include Bruce Rusch, vice-president for engineering, and Lawrence Coppenrath, sales and marketing vice-president; Symbolics indicates that its fiscal second quarter loss will be under $5m, against a profit of $3.1m for the same period last time, on sales of something over $23m; it lost $18.1m in its first quarter after charges.