The votes are in and the winners of the 2020 LEAP Awards (Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program) were announced in a digital ceremony with products across 12 categories, including the category of software.

Critical to LEAP’s success is the involvement of the engineering community. No one at WTWH Media selected the winners. Instead, our editorial team did the arduous work of assembling a top-notch independent judging panel, comprised of a cross-section of OEM design engineers and academics — 14 professionals in total. This judging team was solely responsible for the final results.

The Bronze went to Mentor, a Siemens Business Unit, for its Observation Scan.

ICs for safety critical applications need in-system test to detect faults and monitor circuit aging. Scan-based Logic Built-In-Self-Test (LBIST) is the technique used for in-system test, but traditional LBIST often can’t meet the coverage goals within the required diagnostic test time interval (DTTI). A new LBIST technology called LBIST-OST (Logic BIST with Observation Scan Technology) dramatically improves the efficiency of in-system test.

Traditional LBIST poses two challenges: it often cannot meet the 90% coverage goal required for Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) D certification and fault detection happens only during the capture phase of the LBIST cycle. Each LBIST cycle has two phases—shift and capture. There are as many shift cycles as the length of the longest scan chain. The capture phase uses the values written into the scan chain to drive the combinational logic and capture potential faults. That means all the time spent on the shift phase is time faults are not being detected.

Tessent LBIST-OST employs control and observe test points with a new scan cell functionality that essentially connects the observe points in separate chains. This allows them to capture circuit responses not just during a capture cycle, but also during the shift cycles.

Tessent LBIST-OST delivers up to 10x faster in-system test than traditional LBIST and reduces the number of test patterns needed.

 

The Silver went to CADENAS, for 3Dfindit.com, a visual 3D search engine for manufacturer components.

3DfindIT helps engineers, architects, and designers quickly find, configure and download manufacturer-certified CAD and BIM models. With eight different ways to search millions of 3D CAD & BIM models, from 2300+ manufacturer catalogs, 3DfindIT transforms how designers’ source and specify components for their designs. Once the desired component is found, users can configure and download in more than 150 native and neutral CAD and BIM formats, ensuring the model works seamlessly with their specific deign application. Since all content is provided directly by the manufacturers, the user can be confident the data is accurate and up-to-date.

 

And the Gold went to Lattice Semiconductor for its Lattice Propel software.

Lattice Propel is software designed to accelerate development of applications based on low power, small form factor Lattice FPGAs. The design environment empowers developers of any skill level to quickly and easily design Lattice FPGA-based applications by enabling the easy assembly of components from a robust IP library that includes a RISC-V processor core and numerous peripherals. The Propel design environment automates application development for developers serving the communications, computing, industrial, automotive, and consumer markets.

Propel combines two tools, Lattice Propel Builder (for IP system integration) and Lattice Propel SDK (for application software development). An easy to use system IP integration environment, Propel Builder provides tools to integrate processors and peripheral IP. The graphical integration environment features an easy to use drag-and-drop, correct by construction methodology. All commands are Tcl scriptable. A seamless software development environment, Propel SDK is a software development kit (SDK) with an integrated industry standard IDE and toolchain. The SDK features SW/HW debugging capabilities along with software libraries and board support packages (BSP) for Propel Builder defined systems.

The judges commented: “Lattice structures create enormous potential in the area of design for additive manufacturing.” Congratulations!