DesignCon Paper Awards recognize outstanding contributions to the educational goals of the DesignCon program. Papers are judged both on the merits of the written document and on the quality of their presentation at DesignCon events.

The Awards serve to acknowledge the authors who receive them as leading practitioners in semiconductor and electronic design. The Awards also provide incentive to authors to produce high-quality DesignCon papers and present them in a lucid and compelling manner.

Paper Review
The first step of the selection process is a review of the full-length papers accepted for the DesignCon 2007 technical program. Members of the DesignCon 2007 Technical Program Committee will receive the full-length papers for the tracks they reviewed. They will send their choices for the top papers in the track to Barry Sullivan, DesignCon Program Director. Finalists for each track will be selected based on the votes from the reviewers.

Papers are judged along the following dimensions, listed in order of importance:

1. Quality—An award-quality paper should be well organized and easily understood. This is a straightforward area to judge, especially on a relative basis.

2. Relevance—The paper should be highly relevant to the interests of the DesignCon audience, and the track topic in particular.

3. Impact—Award papers should make a substantial contribution to the educational mission of DesignCon. Papers reporting on important results, methodologies or case studies of special significane should be recognized.

4. Originality—This area requires special note. Keeping in mind the goal of providing a high-quality educational program for practicing engineers, it is easy to see that a report on a new design methodology or a case study for an innovative design has great educational value. However, an outstanding paper on a "classical" topic can be an Award candidate, and papers of this sort should also be viewed favorably.

5. Commercial content—Another area deserving special mention. It is acceptable to use a product in a design case study or as a proof of concept for a design methodology, and many of the papers the DesignCon audience views most favorably do just that. However, we also know that the audience responds most negatively to anything that comes across as a product pitch. A good case study that uses a real product in an appropriate manner to demonstrate feasibility or illustrate a concept should be considered favorably.

Judging Presentations
Effective presentations add significantly to the educational value of the DesignCon technical program. While selection as a finalist for a DesignCon Paper Award is a notable achievement in itself, Award winners will be chosen from among the finalists based on the quality of their presentations. The same dimensions for evaluation of the written papers - quality, relevance, originality and commercial content – apply here as well, although Quality will be the primary criterion.

Judges are recruited from the DesignCon 2007 Technical Program Committee to ensure adequate coverage of the award areas listed above.