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Mentor Graphics Makes a Transition

Mentor Graphics Makes a Transition
by Daniel Nenni on 09-07-2018 at 12:00 pm

This is the fourteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

I joined Mentor Graphics (now Mentor, A Siemens Business), in late 1993. Tom Engibous, one of my direct reporting people at TI, was promoted to replace me as head of the Semiconductor business of TI and I moved on to what I knew would be a real challenge,… Read More


Apps Before there were Apps

Apps Before there were Apps
by Daniel Nenni on 08-31-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the thirteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

My development of a calculator program to determine the Black Scholes value for an option was not the only application that attracted financial people to programmable calculators. As the SR-52, and later TI 59, grew in popularity, and took market… Read More


Semiconductors Become a Worldwide Business

Semiconductors Become a Worldwide Business
by Daniel Nenni on 08-24-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the twelfth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

Among the companies that bought a license from AT&T to produce the transistor was Sony. While the U.S. maintained its lead in technology, other countries like Japan emerged as competitors. Semiconductor manufacturing was both labor intensive… Read More


Why Do Brilliant People Like to Work Together?

Why Do Brilliant People Like to Work Together?
by Daniel Nenni on 08-17-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the eleventh in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

In high technology, there are numerous instances of highly productive groups coming together and generating game-changing ideas and products. This happened at Shockley Semiconductor in the 1960s when Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, Jean Hoerni and… Read More


Desperation Drives Inspiration

Desperation Drives Inspiration
by Daniel Nenni on 08-10-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the tenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

1978 was a bad year for TI. In April, Intel announced the 8086 followed by disclosures of 16-bit microprocessors from Motorola, the 68000, and Zilog, the Z8000. TI had tried to leapfrog the microprocessor business by introducing the TMS 9900 16-bit … Read More


Speak N Spell

Speak N Spell
by Daniel Nenni on 08-03-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the ninth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

Success has many authors and the Speak & Spell product from Texas Instruments generated lots of write-ups to demonstrate this. For most of the semiconductor industry, results of innovation were not apparent to the masses but, for the consumer … Read More


Stubbornness Captures an Entire Disruptive Technology and Leads to an Academy Award

Stubbornness Captures an Entire Disruptive Technology and Leads to an Academy Award
by Daniel Nenni on 07-27-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the eighth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

In 1972, I joined TI and was assigned to work on a new contract that had just been awarded and badly needed staffing. The U.S. Department of Defense had decided that solid-state charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors were going to be a strategic technology… Read More


TI Patent Priorities

TI Patent Priorities
by Daniel Nenni on 07-20-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the seventh in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

Probably the most innovative person I met at Texas Instruments, other than Jack Kilby, was Ken Bean. Ken had a list of patents that would impress even the most skeptical. He started his career at Eagle Picher and came to TI in the mid 1960s. He was a warm,… Read More


Black Scholes and IC Design

Black Scholes and IC Design
by Daniel Nenni on 07-13-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the sixth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

From the earliest days of my childhood, I was always trying to find ways to make money – paper routes, lawn mowing, coke sales at football games – I did it all. And, except for a motorcycle I bought during junior high school when, at age 14, I could get a driver’s… Read More


TI: Semiconductor Industry History of Innovation

TI: Semiconductor Industry History of Innovation
by Daniel Nenni on 07-06-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the fifth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

Texas Instruments is a remarkable company founded by remarkable people. And Eric Jonsson was one of the most remarkable visionaries of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century. He was a renaissance man who created an industry and a fortune by following the needs… Read More