EDN's 15th Annual Innovation Awards Program
By Staff -- EDN, 1/20/2005
EDN announced the winners of its 15th Annual Innovation Awards at a black-tie event on March 7, 2005 at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. The event featured keynote addresses by Walter Mossberg, author of The Wall Street Journal's "Personal Technology" column, and Geoffrey C. Orsak, PhD, Dean of Southern Methodist University's School of Engineering. In addition, EDN awarded $10,000 to an engineering school to be chosen by the Innovator of the Year, Susanne Paul of Silicon Laboratories.
EDN's editors have chosen this year's finalists from the scores of candidates in our annual Innovator and Innovation Program. Now, we're calling on you to help select the winners. Read the detailed descriptions below, and carefully consider the entries for the most innovative products and people of 2004. Then go to our Innovation Web Site, www.edn.com/innovation to cast your votes. We will accept only one ballot per person. The deadline for voting is Feb 1, so vote today!
EDN also prides itself on the depth and quality of its technical articles, whether staff-written or from outside contributors. Take a look at our nominations for Best Contributed Article and vote for the one you feel was best among some fine choices.
Finally, to celebrate our 15th anniversary of honoring innovation, we will present a special "Best of 15 Years" award. You can read about these finalists
below as well.
EDN is honoring the finalists and winners at a reception in San Francisco on March 7. Please join us. See www.edn.com/innovation for all the details.
ASHRAF LOTFI, JIAN TAN, TRIFON LIAKOPOULOS, ROBERT FILAS, ENPIRION
Power is becoming an increasingly difficult problem in system design as chips get more powerful and power-hungry and end products get smaller and smaller. Enpirion claims that power management consumes as much as 80% of the board area in a typical application, and that product size and features are constrained by the vast amount of power devices required. Enpirion’s team of President and Chief Technology Officer Ashraf Lotfi, PhD, Director of Semiconductor Technology Jian Tan, Director of MEMS Technology Trifon Liakopoulos, and Chief Scientist Robert Filas sought to address the power-supply-footprint problem by integrating an entire dc/dc converter on a chip. Indeed, the team started its work as the Power Technologies Research Group at Bell Laboratories. The result is the 3A/10W synchronous-buck dc/dc converter nominated for an Innovation Award.
Lotfi’s team achieved two breakthrough innovations that warrant recognition. The first is the development of high-power, high-speed MOSFET transistors that are compatible with low-cost CMOS-silicon-fabrication lines. These power MOSFETs can switch at speeds 10 times that of many devices and still maintain high efficiency. The high switching speed enables low-cost and small-footprint power topologies. A high-frequency MEMS (microelectrical-mechanical) inductor is the second critical innovation. Together with the MOSFET transistors, the MEMS magnetics, based on an iron-cobalt alloy core, enable the integration of the entire dc/dc converter into a single IC package. Enpirion