Walden C. Rhines
CEO & Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mentor Graphics
Walden is a leader in worldwide electronic design automation with revenue of $789 million in 2008. During his tenure at Mentor Graphics, revenue has more than doubled and Mentor has grown the industrys number one market share solutions in four of the ten largest product segments of the EDA industry. Prior to joining Mentor Graphics, Rhines was Executive Vice President of Texas Instruments; Semiconductor Group, sharing responsibility for TIs Components Sector, and having direct responsibility for the entire semiconductor business with more than $5 billion of revenue and over 30,000 people. During his 21 years at TI, Rhines managed TIs thrust into digital signal processing and supervised that business from inception with the TMS 320 family of DSPs through growth to become the cornerstone of TIs semiconductor technology. He also supervised the development of the first TI speech synthesis devices (used in "Speak & Spell") and is co-inventor of the GaN blue-violet light emitting diode (now important for DVD players).
