/> More than 70 technical sessions were held at the three conferences, covering all areas of design including synthesis, verification, low power design, physical design/sign off, analog/mixed-signal design, custom design, test and rapid prototyping tools. Award winning papers for each location include:

SNUG Boston

* First place, Best Paper: Bruce Zahn of LSI Corporation for Experiences with PrimeTime ECO Capabilities
* Second place, Best Paper and Best First-time Presenter: Mike Spofford and Kate Kelley of Xilinx for Achieving Faster Turnaround Time and Better QOR Using Compile Points and Design Preservation Flow for Virtex Devices
* Third place, Best Paper: Wilson Snyder of Cavium Networks for The Verilog Preprocessor: Force for 'Good and Evil'
* Technical Committee Award, Honorable Mention: Joe Manzella of LSI Corporation for Customizing VMM Transactors with Options

SNUG Ottawa:

* Best paper and Technical Committee Award: Christopher Krueger of STMicroelectronics for ICC Tips and Tricks
* Second place, Best Paper: David Long and Doug Smith of Doulos for Stick a Fork in It: Applications for SystemVerilog Dynamic Processes
* Third place, Best Paper: Mike Olson and Peter Meyer of DA-Integrated for End to End Test Optimization Using IJTAG

SNUG Austin:

* First place, Best Paper: Mike Burns, James Roberts and Ray Voith of Oracle for Database Schema for Very High Bandwidth Coverage Collection
* Second place, Best Paper: Mohammed Shahid Imam and Martin Saint-Laurent of Qualcomm Incorporated for Reducing Flip-Flop Power in Hexagon Core Design and use of the Flop-Merging
* Third place, Best Paper: Hyon Han and Hongda Lu of AMD for Flop Clustering Algorithm to Reduce Clock Power
* Technical Committee Award, Honorable Mention: John Paz, Sameer Shah and Colin MacDonald of Broadcom Corporation for Explore Your Design Visually Using PrimeTime & Gnuplot

Aart de Geus, chairman and chief executive officer at Synopsys, opened the conference at SNUG Boston with a keynote sharing his perspective on important semiconductor trends, including the rapidly growing smart technology space. de Geus also spoke about Synopsys' recent technology developments, including the new HSPICE® Precision Parallel (HPP) multi-threading technology that delivers up to 7X simulation speed-up for complex analog and mixed-signal designs, as well as the company's expanded leadership in the virtual prototyping solutions space. SNUG Boston also featured Synopsys' Designer Community Expo, which showcased the integration between Synopsys and more than 20 of its partners from across the electronics industry, providing solutions that address the difficult design challenges SNUG attendees face.

There was a sense of optimism at the twelfth annual SNUG Boston, which I think can be attributed to the rebound the semiconductor industry has experienced this year. The race towards advanced nodes is in full force and engineers are taking full advantage of the ability to collaborate, share and learn in order to solve some of the toughest design challenges out there, said de Geus. We listen intently to our customers to make sure that we are providing solutions that meet their needs and allow them to drive continued advancements in electronics. I always leave SNUG conferences energized by the thoughtful dialog that takes place across the engineering community.

The 2010 SNUG Sponsors include: Platinum Sponsors ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and TSMC; Gold Sponsors Altera Corporation, Xilinx and Zuken; and Silver Sponsors Agilent Technologies Inc. and Doulos.