Walden C. "Wally" Rhines (born November 11, 1946) is an American engineer and businessman. Rhines is President and CEO of Cornami, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company focused on fully homomorphic encryption. Previously, he was President and CEO of Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business for 23 years and Executive VP of the Semiconductor Group of Texas Instruments for 21 years.[1][2] Rhines was named overall CEO of the Year by Portland Business Journal in 2012 and Oregon Technology Executive of the Year by the Technology Association of Oregon in 2003.[3][4][5] He was named an IEEE Fellow in 2017.[6]
"First, people have to develop a level of trust in § fully homomorphic encryption...its unique unhackable character and the confidence that no one but the owner can see the plain text data. Second, HFE technology has to advance to a level where all computation can be performed at reasonable speeds without decrypting the data. And third, equipment manufacturers have to begin test programs with customers to demonstrate the benefit."
—Walden C. Rhines, 2022. From a SemiWiki podcast, Podcast EP65: Trust But Verify – The Backstory of Applied Materials and Cornami with Wally Rhines.[10]
Rhines worked at Texas Instruments (TI) from 1972 to 1993, serving as executive vice president of the semiconductor group and president of the data systems group. While at TI, Rhines supervised development of speech synthesis chips used in the Speak & Spell; developed the first publicly available computer program (for a calculator) to calculate the Black–Scholes value of a stock option; and supervised the creation of the TMS320 digital signal processor.[20][21][22] In a 1985 profile of Rhines in the Austin American-Statesman, industry consultant Will Strauss told reporter Russell Mitchell: "He [Rhines] can claim the TMS-320 digital signal processor chip; that's the one to beat on the street right now."[23] By 1990, TI's share of the worldwide market for general purpose DSPs was approximately 60%.[24] A January 1991 article in Electronic Business Buyer reported that "[s]ources say that TI has the only profitable general purpose DSP operation in the world."[25]
Rhines became CEO of Mentor Graphics in 1993, when the company's annual revenue was about $340 million.[26][27] The company passed $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2011.[28] In 2013 Mentor Graphics announced it would begin paying a quarterly dividend, making it the only of big three electronic design automation (EDA) companies to do so; (Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys are the other two).[29] Rhines has led the company into new business areas, including providing software for the auto industry; of the big three EDA companies, analyst Tom Diffely said "Mentor has the most going on in these adjacent markets...I think (the auto industry) is going to be a long-term huge market for them."[30]
Siemens announced its $4.5 billion acquisition of Mentor Graphics on November 13, 2016; the deal closed four months later.[31] Rhines remained as CEO of Mentor, a Siemens Business and later CEO Emeritus through 2020.
Rhines joined the many-core accelerator chip company Cornami as CEO in March 2020.[32]
"Moore's Law will indeed become irrelevant to the semiconductor industry. But the remarkable progress in reducing the cost per bit, and cost per switch, will continue indefinitely, thanks to the learning curve. And with it, the number of new applications for electronics will continue to be limited only by the creativity of those who search for solutions to new problems."
—Walden C. Rhines, 2016. From a Scientific American guest blog post, Moore's Law and the Future of Solid-State Electronics.[33]
"Aware that a PhD thesis has to be based on original research, Maruska realized that he needed to adopt a different approach compared to his colleagues back East. He spoke at length with another graduate student, Walden C. Rhines, who sat at an adjacent desk in the McCullough Building at Stanford. They decided to substitute magnesium for zinc to create a novel acceptor. Soon they were preparing GaN films doped with magnesium which were pale yellow in color and electrically insulating...On June 8, 1972, after applying 150 V to a set of point contacts, the first example of violet light emission from Mg-doped GaN was observed. The emission peaked at 425 nm, which is indeed in the violet region of the visible spectrum."
—Herbert Paul Maruska and Walden Clark Rhines, 2015. From a Solid-State Electronics article, A modern perspective on the history of semiconductor nitride blue light sources.[17]
Rhines, W.C. (2005). "Moore's law is unconstitutional". Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on VLSA Design. IEEE. pp. 31–32. doi:10.1109/ICVD.2005.121.
Rhines, W.C. (2003). "Part VII: Designers Face Critical Challenges and Discontinuities in Analog/Mixed Signal Design and Physical Verification". In Kuehlmann, Andreas (ed.). The best of ICCAD : 20 years of excellence in computer-aided design. Boston [u.a.]: Kluwer Academic Publ. pp. 659–662. ISBN978-1-4020-7391-5.
Herbert Wertheim and Wally Rhines at University of Florida in 2016.
In memory of his father, Rhines endowed a graduate fellowship in Engineering at the University of Michigan in 2016 [51] and four professorships at the University of Florida, including one in 2021 in fully homomorphic encryption in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.[52] From 1996 to 2020 he served on the board of Classic Wines Auction in Portland, which supports a variety of children and family charities.[53]
^Stevens, Suzanne (6 December 2012). "Gallery: Oregon's Most Admired CEOs". Portland Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
^George, Vander Voort; Francis, Warmuth; Samuel, Purdy; Albert, Szirmae (1993). Metallography: Past, Present, and Future. Philadelphia, PA: American Society for Testing and Materials. p. 73. ISBN0-8031-1484-2. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
^Steinert-Threlkeld, Tom (19 October 1993). "2nd-ranking exec in TI microchip division to become president of Mentor Graphics". The Dallas Morning News.
