Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced the call-for-entries of its 25th annual Technology Leadership Awards (TLA) competition, continuing its tradition of recognizing excellence in printed circuit board (PCB) design. Started in 1988, this program is the longest running competition of its kind in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry. It recognizes engineers and CAD designers who use the innovative technology provided by Mentor Graphics to address today’s complex PCB systems design challenges and produce products.
Prominent experts in the PCB industry will judge the contest, including: Happy Holden, Gentex Corporation (retired); Gary Ferrari, FTG Circuits technical support director; Pete Waddell, president of UP Media and publisher of Printed Circuit Design & Fab/Circuits Assembly Magazine; Andy Kowalewski, Metamelko LP senior interconnect designer; Rick Hartley, L-3 Communications/Avionics Division senior principal engineer; Susy Webb, Fairfield Nodal senior PCB designer; and Charles Pfeil, Mentor Graphics Systems Design Division director of engineering.
“Mentor continues to be in the forefront of recognizing and rewarding excellent designs. The TLA awards allow designers who are using innovative ideas and design practices to be rewarded for their outside-the-box thinking in a way that nothing else in the industry does,” stated Susy Webb, senior PCB designer, Fairfield Nodal. “These new practices will add to the general knowledge and creativity of the whole community of designers by leading them to try new and different concepts themselves.”
This year, entrants will be able to submit their design accomplishments in any of six categories representing a wide variety of industries:
- Consumer electronics and handheld
- Industrial control, instrumentation, security and medical
- Military and aerospace
- Computers, blade and servers, memory systems
- Telecom, network controllers, line cards
- Transportation and automotive
“Our annual PCB Technology Leadership Awards contest provides a worldwide opportunity for talented designers to showcase innovative designs. Each year we see ever increasing challenges and the use of new technologies implemented,” said Dan Boncella, director of marketing, Mentor Graphics Systems Design Division. “The submissions for this contest are really quite impressive. We are expecting this year’s competition to be bigger than ever, with entries from many major electronics companies, as well as from smaller teams.”
Winners will be named for each category, plus a “Best Overall Design” recipient. The timeframe for submitting entries is from August 19th through September 26th, 2014. Entrants can apply online at www.mentor.com/go/tla.
The Mentor TLA contest is open to any designs created with the Mentor PCB solutions, including the Board Station, Xpedition and PADS design flows. Judging will be based on overcoming complexity challenges, such as small form factor, high-speed content, design team collaboration, advanced PCB fabrication technologies and design-cycle time reduction. Winners will be announced December 1st on a worldwide web broadcast.