Wally Rhines on the Convergence of Design and Mfg., and Mentor Graphics Update

In the following video, Wally Rhines, CEO Emeritus, Mentor Graphics speaks with Graham Bell about the worlds of Design and Manufacturing meeting at SEMICON West and ES DEsign West, a co-located event, July 9 – 11 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.  Wally also brings the audience up to date on how Mentor is doing after the acquisition by Siemens. A transcript of the conversation is below.

Graham Bell: Hi, this is Graham Bell with Silvaco. I have the pleasure of speaking with Wally Rhines, CEO Emeritus of Mentor Graphics. Hi, Wally.

Wally Rhines: Hi, Graham, how are you?

GB: Good. We're at SEMICON West, and it's located with ES Design West. We're bringing two worlds together; the software of design and the manufacturing worlds. How do you see those two worlds working together?

WR: So this is the first baby step in what next year is going to be a big step. We have most of the EDA industry represented here, but we're a small part of SEMICON West this year. Next year, you'll see the two shows, the traditional SEMICON West and the Design Automation Conference (DAC), co-located; we'll fill up Moscone here and we'll have the technical conference for DAC at the same time so you'll have all the design people, all the manufacturing people here together at one time, and that will be a big change.

GB: So, any alignments, any things that you see working together for both domains?

WR: Yeah. There have always been areas of overlap between EDA and manufacturing. One of them that is big business for the EDA industry, close to $200 million a year revenue, is optical proximity correction, which is provided largely by the EDA companies, and where the customers are traditionally here at SEMICON, not traditionally at DAC.

GB: Now, Mentor Graphics has gone through a merger with Siemens. Again, that seems like maybe two worlds coming together. How has that transition worked out?

WR: So, it's remarkable. I stayed on as CEO for 18 months or a little more after the merger, and then I've transitioned into a role of external communications and customer relations since then, but it's just gotten better and better. So the year before the merger, we set an all-time record for revenue and earnings. The first year after the merger, we set another all-time record. But 2018 was really something, not only did we set an all-time record, but Mentor grew more than twice as fast as our major competitors in 2018, and we had record design wins. Actually, even in 2019, we've had the largest design win in our history. So the resources at Siemens, the ability to go out and do acquisitions, the sense of stability it's given our customers, so we no longer have activists threatening to take over the company. It's just a whole set of things has lined up, and it's been tremendously energizing for Mentor.

GB: Wally, thanks for bringing us up to date.

WR: Thank you, Graham.

Category: Silvaco

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