Innovator of the year 2002-2003: Mahesh Rao

This year's Innovator of the Year is Mahesh Rao. Chosen by the readers of EDN Asia, Rao is the founder, president and CEO of Aspire Communications, a design and development start-up in Mysore, India.

Rao was involved with the first USB mobile chipset (430MX); the 440BX with support for 100MHz SDRAM and system bus; and the first Rambus (Intel 820) memory chipset. Innovations on the 440BX earned him the Intel Achievement Award. His start-up has produced a single-board computer based on the Intel StrongARM processor for applications in academic environments, project management software, and educational management software. The company plans to produce next-generation products for the WLAN and GPS/GPRS areas.

EDN Asia congratulates Rao on his achievement. We are confident that he will go on to achieve greater heights of technological advancements in the near future.



We would also like to thank and congratulate the other innovators who were included in this competition, as well as the many voters who submitted their nominations. Mahesh Rao will receive a specially engraved trophy from EDN Asia. He will also receive the following prizes from Altera, the sponsor of this competition, worth over $5,000:

• A Nios¨ Development Kit, Stratixª Edition, which provides everything needed for system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) development. Based on Altera's Nios embedded processor and the Stratix EP1S10 device, this development kit provides an ideal environment for the development and prototype of a wide range of embedded applications. The kit contains everything needed for system-level design, whether the user has a background in hardware or software, or both.


• A HP iPAQ H2210 personal digital assistant (PDA).

Voter's Prize
EDN Asia and Altera wish to thank all those who voted in this competition. Two hundred voters will receive the Altera Digital Library CD, which includes the Altera Quartus II Web Edition, MAX+PLUS II Baseline, and third-party development software; technical information on all Altera device families, device packaging options, in-system programmability support, and software tools; Altera's current marketing literature, including the Component Selector Guide, Design Software Selector Guide and Intellectual Property Selector Guide; and all current information on Altera MegaCore functions.

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