Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, announced that it has been recognized by the following global electronics industry publications and organizations for product innovation and technology leadership.
After launching in November, Microchip won three prestigious awards for its MGC3130, which offers low-power, precise, fast and robust hand position tracking with free-space gesture recognition. The MGC3130, featuring Microchip’s patented GestIC® technology, was handpicked by the editors of Electronic Design Magazine for their “2012 Best of Electronic Design Awards,” in the Digital category, for enabling the next dimension in intuitive, gesture-based, non-contact user interfaces for a broad range of end products. EE Times China Magazine’s “2013 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards” selected the MGC3130 as a Product of the Year in the Microcontroller/Memory/Interface category. EDN Magazine named the MGC3130 to their “2012 Hot 100” list, in the Microcontrollers & Processors category.
EE Times China also chose Microchip for two additional “ACE Products of the Year.” The 70 MIPS dsPIC33E and PIC24E family of digital signal controllers and microcontrollers won in the Digital Processor/DSP/FPGA category, and the MPLAB® XC C compiler line won in the EDA/Tools category.
Likewise, EDN Magazine named a total of six Microchip products to its annual “Hot 100” list, which their editors selected from “the many thousands of products announced during the past year.” In the Analog category, Microchip’s MCP47A1 digital-to-analog converter was honored; and the 23A1024/23LC1024, 23A512/23LC512, 23LCV51/23LCV1024 serial SRAM family, which includes a battery-backed non-volatile option, was chosen in the Memory & Storage category. Two products were selected in the Boards & Development Tools category, including the MPLAB XC C compiler line, which represents Microchip’s simplified and integrated compiler strategy, as well as the RN-131 and RN-171 PICtail™/PICtail Plus Wi-Fi® development boards with the TCP/IP stack integrated on the module, enabling wireless connectivity for any microcontroller via a serial interface. Finally, the PIC12LF1840T48A, which integrates an 8-bit microcontroller with an RF transmitter for secure-access applications, was chosen for EDN’s RF/Microwave category.
The venerable 8-bit PIC® microcontroller was also named a finalist in Design News Magazine’s “2012 Golden Mousetrap Awards.” Specifically, the PIC10F(LF)32X and PIC1XF(LF)150X MCUs with integrated configurable logic in 6- to 20-pin packages got the nod in their Electronics & Test: Embedded Computing/Processing category.
Microchip’s JukeBlox® 3.1 Wireless Audio Platform, based on technology from its recent SMSC acquisition, won a 2012 “Readers’ Choice Tech Award” from ECN Magazine in the Boards and Modules category. Winners were named by the editors of ECN, based on their assessment of readers’ newsletter clicks, Web traffic and social-media engagement for each of the many products they covered during the year.
In addition to the three EE Times China ACE Awards, China’s trade press bestowed three other annual product awards on Microchip. The MCP6N11 Instrumentation Amplifier won two honors, one from EDN China’s “Innovation Awards” in the Leading Product category, and the other from EEPW Magazine’s “Power Supply Products Awards” in the Best Application: Power Devices category. From their separate “Editors’ Choice Awards,” EEPW named Microchip’s AR1100 mTouch™ Analog Resistive Touch Screen Controller their Best Touch Panel Solution.
In the area of technology leadership, The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) honored Microchip for significantly contributing to the development of its next-generation industry benchmarks. Specifically, Microchip was recognized for determining fair and reliable cross-platform accuracy requirements for EEMBC’s FPBench™ benchmark, which is critical to the evaluation of floating-point performance. Additionally, Microchip evaluated and recommended math function libraries for software-only reference implementations, and tested and ported multiple libraries to make FPBench safe for 16-bit microcontrollers.
“It is a testament to Microchip’s continuous-improvement culture that we have received this recognition from an esteemed organization such as EEMBC, as well as product awards from some of the most influential global publications in our industry,” said Steve Sanghi, Microchip’s president and CEO. “The breadth of these product awards across the diverse categories of human interface, microcontrollers, DSP, wireless networking, audio, analog, memory and development tools illustrates the continued investments we are making—both in R&D and strategic acquisitions—to enable our customers’ innovation.”
