Recently, Daniel Nenni blogged on the presentation Wally Rhines gave at #56th DAC. Daniel provided a great summary, but I want to dive into a portion of the presentation in more detail. I love Wally’s presentations, but sometimes you cannot absorb the wealth of information he provides when you initially see it. It’s… Read More
From Wild West to Modern Life the Semiconductor Evolution
What started as blogs, or vignettes as Wally calls them, posted on SemiWiki is now a free PDF eBook. The journey starts with his school days at Stanford through 20+ years at TI and 24+ years at Mentor Graphics. Wally has traveled millions of miles meeting with every customer imaginable while presenting hundreds of different keynotes… Read More
Basic Techniques for Managing EDA Business
The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series finale
During the period from 1997, I had the privilege to work with Greg Hinckley, a superb “out of the box” thinker and excellent operational manager. We had such a common view of the world that we almost always agreed upon the best approach to problems and opportunities … Read More
Carl Icahn Activist Activities
The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series continues
Carl Icahn is a remarkably charming person. You might expect him to be a mean, aggressive adversary but he actually jokes about his foibles, tells stories about interesting people and gently poses questions. “I thought Jerry Yang just didn’t want to sell his Yahoo… Read More
Honey I Shrunk the EDA TAM
The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series continues
Throughout the history of the EDA industry, pricing models have caused discontinuities in the way the industry operates. For a variety of competitive reasons, individual companies have developed ways to change the pricing model in an attempt to secure competitive… Read More
EDA Cost and Pricing
This is the nineteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
When I moved from the semiconductor industry to Mentor, I expected most of my technology and business experience to apply similarly in EDA software. To some extent, that was correct. But there was a fundamental difference that required a change… Read More
AVANTI: The Acquisition Game
This is the eighteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Gerry Hsu’s departure from Cadence to form Avanti (originally named ArcSys) is chronicled in legal testimony as accusations of theft of software were followed by legal battles, financial awards and even prison terms. Mentor and Synopsys were… Read More
Design Automation and the Engineering Workstation
This is the seventeenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Several common aspects have existed for what is now the modern Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. When I joined TI in 1972, the company was very proud of its design automation capability as a competitive differentiator. Much of the… Read More
Systems Design vs Integrated Circuit Design
This is the sixteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Electronic design automation (EDA) began and grew with the integrated circuit (IC) design business probably because IC design grew in complexity faster than printed circuit boards. The race for superiority in PCB design evolved in parallel,… Read More
Mentor Rise and Fall
This is the fifteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
During 1980 and 1981, three companies, Daisy, Mentor and Valid were founded. Daisy and Valid attacked the computer automated design business with custom hardware workstations plus software to provide the unique capabilities required by engineers.… Read More
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