ACE Award finalists for "Large Company of the Year" are: Analog Devices Inc.; EMC Corp.; Samsung Electronics; Tektronix Inc.; and Texas Instruments Inc.

Finalists in the small/medium company category are: Brion Technologies Inc.; National Instruments; PortalPlayer; Trolltech; and Wind River.

Wireless and networking companies dominate the list of nominees in the category, "Startup Company of the Year." Finalists are: Airgo Networks Inc.; ConSentry Networks; DiBcom; Quorum Systems Inc.; and Sling Media Inc.

"Design Team of the Year" finalists work for: Actel Fusion Technology; Freescale Semiconductor; a joint IBM-Microsoft team; Motorola; and Northrop Grumman AGS & BMS (Airborne Ground Surveillance & Battle Management Systems).

Finalists in the category, "Most Promising Technology," are: Cambrios; E Ink Corp.; partners Intel Corp. and Photonics Tech Lab; Mobilygen; and Nantero.

Two individual ACE Awards will also be presented during the awards ceremony, to be held April 4 at the Fairmont Hotel (San Jose, Calif.). "Executive of the Year" finalists are: Charles Gershman, founder, president and CEO of Bay Microsystems; Jack Harding, chairman, president and CEO of eSilicon Corp.; Freescale CEO Michel Mayer; Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless; and Kenneth Klein, chairman, president and CEO of Wind River.

ACE Award "Innovator of the Year" finalists are: Katsu Nakamura, Analog Devices; David Tsiang, Cisco Systems Inc.; Freescale's Leo Mathew; Gary Neel, Home Diagnostics Inc.; and Intel's Mario Paniccia.

The 2006 EE Times ACE Awards ceremony is being held in conjunction with the 2006 Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley, slated for April 3-7 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose.

The event is sponsored by CMP Media LLC, publisher of EE Times.