ACE Awards celebrates engineers, products, and companies

The 2015 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards, presented by EDN and EE Times, were held last night as part of the ESC Silicon Valley event.

The awards celebrate some of the best engineers, products, and companies making a difference every day in the electronics industry. 

“The advances made each day by engineering and design are outstanding, bettering every aspect of life for today and tomorrow,” said Suzanne Deffree, Executive Editor, EDN. “At the ACE Awards we celebrated some stellar examples of creativity in design, innovation, and technology. We congratulate and thank this year's ACE Awards nominees, finalists, and winners.”

Click through the list of winners below to learn more about all the ACE Awards winners.

Company of the Year

ACE Awards Names NXP ‘Company of the Year
In a year distinguished by a wave of mergers in the chip industry, NXP fired the opening salvo by announcing a merger plan with Freescale. The news stunned the world, but won overwhelming approval from shareholders, customers, and employees.

Design Team of the Year

GPU's latest incarnation traces rays in real-time
The Imagination Technologies PowerVR Wizard brings real-time ray tracer design and scores the 2015 Design Team of the Year ACE Award.

Marketing Team

Freescale Truck Wins ACE
Freescale's Internet of Tomorrow traveling showcase and training facility inside big rig trailer wins the ACE award for marketing at EE Times.

Executive of the Year

Marvell CEO Named Exec of Year
Sehat Sutardja, founder and chief executive of Marvell, was named executive of the year in the annual ACE Awards in part for driving innovation with two new technology initiatives this year.

Innovator of the Year

Chris Diorio: Driver of RFID, standards, and race cars
For his pioneering work in advancing next-generation UHF RFID technology and expanding the range of applications RFID can serve, including to IoT, Impinj's Chris Diorio has been named ACE Awards Innovator of the Year.

STEM Impact Award

STEM hero: Microchip's Steve Sanghi
Microchip's Steve Sanghi was recently inducted into the Foundation STEM Hall of Fame as a STEM Hero and now has an ACE Awards win in the STEM Impact category to further celebrate his efforts in encouraging the next generation of engineers.

Startup of the Year

Startup Award Goes to Incubator
An incubator for semiconductor startups launched in December was itself named the startup of the year in the annual ACE Awards hosted by EE Times and EDN.

Energy Technology Award

Cypress Dual Mode PMICs Win ACE Energy Award
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has been honored with UBM Canon’s ACE Award for energy technology. The San Jose, Calif.-based company produces dual mode energy harvesting power management integrated circuits for the Internet of Things.

IoT Product of the Year

RFID Chip Tags IoT Award
The Monza R6 tag chip from Impinj was named Internet of Things Product of the Year in the annual ACE Awards, in part for the company’s sustained efforts to nurture the fledgling market for UHF RFID tags.

Ultimate Products

Analog ICs
LTC2983, Linear Technology

Development Kits
SDAccel development environment for OpenCL, C, and C++, Xilinx Inc.

LEDs and Lighting
LSP05/LSP10 Series Surge Protection Device Modules, Littelfuse, Inc.

Logic/Interface/Memory
VersaClock 5 Programmable Clock Family, Integrated Device Technology

Passives, Interconnects and Electromechanical
Coolbit Optical Engines, TE

Power
ChiP Bus Converter Module (BCM) Family, Vicor Corporation

Processors (FPGAs, MCUs, Microprocessors)
Myriad 2, Movidius

Reference Designs
Cyclone V SoC, Altera Corporation

Sensors
Si1132/4x UV Sensor Family, Silicon Labs

Software
LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite, National Instruments

Test and Measurement Systems and Boards
LabMaster 10-100Zi, Teledyne LeCroy

Wireless/RF
PSoC 4 BLE, Cypress Semiconductor Corporation

Jim Williams Contributor of the Year Award

Steve Sandler: Give back more than you take in engineering
What motivates an engineer to teach? Here’s a look at what makes Steve Sandler, the 2015 winner of the Jim Williams Contributor of the Year Award ACE Award, give more back to engineering than he has taken.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Better before bigger: How Linear Tech was built
ACE Lifetime Achievement award winners Linear Technology’s Bob Swanson and Bob Dobkin share their deep industry history, core values, and legendary success strategies in this interview.

The ACE Awards are made possible in part by Mouser Electronics, Marvell, and Linear Technology.