WILSONVILLE, OR -- Several companies were repeat winners of Mentor Graphics' annual Technology Leadership Awards, announced today.

The Best Overall Design went to GE Intelligent Platforms from the UK for a rugged 6U singe-board computer for high-rel applications. The winning design had over 3,500 nets, 20,000 connections,, 11,000 vias, and 80 components, including 20 BGAs placed on both sides of the board. The design team included Paul Curran, Mike Tapp, Rob Savage and John Digby.

For Consumer Electronics & Handhelds, the winner was Seagate (USA), and the runnerup was Qualcomm.

In the Industrial, Instrumentation, and Medical category, NTC ELINS – JSC of Russia won. GE Intelligent Platforms was runnerup.

In the Computers, Blade & Servers and Memory Systems category, the winner was ZTE (China), and in second was Broadcom (USA).

In the military/aerospace category, the winner for a second time was General Dynamics of Canada. Astrium of the UK was the runnerup.

For the Telecom/Network Controllers/Line Cards category, the winner was Alcatel-Lucent of Italy. In second was Sienna ECAD Technologies (a repeat winner) and Alcatel-Lucent of Israel.

For Transportation/Automotive, the winner was Huizhou Desay SV Automotive (China) for an MP5 unit. The runnerup was another design team from Huizhou, this for a radio navigation product.

All boards were designed using Mentor CAD software. This was Mentor's 22d annual TLA program. Disclosure: PCD&F design technical editor Pete Waddell was a judge. Other judges were Rick Hartley of L-3 Communications, Gary Ferrari of FTG Circuits, Happy Holden of Foxconn, and Andy Kowalewski of AdvantagePC.