Wally Rhines' Moment

My most memorable DAC was one I didn’t attend --- 1982 in Las Vegas. In March of 1982, TI Semiconductor Group was totally reorganized. After running TI’s Microprocessor Division for years, I now had the additional responsibility of managing the Design Automation Division (DAD), a bureaucratic central support organization that I had been doing battle with for a long time, trying to secure permission to allow designers to use commercial EDA tools instead of the mandated TI DAD-developed tools. I was positively delighted when, three months later, the DAD management attended DAC, evaluated Daisy and Mentor Graphics and made a recommendation for TI to adopt Mentor’s IdeaStation across the entire Semiconductor Group, which we did. From then on, I religiously attended DAC, starting with Miami in 1983.

Wally Rhines - CEO Mentor Graphics