Bill Mensch

American engineer William David Mensch, Jr., born 9 February 1945 in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Western Design Center (WDC) of Mesa, Arizona. Before founding the Western Design Center in 1978, Mensch held design engineering and management positions at Philco-Ford, Motorola, MOS Technology and Integrated Circuit Engineering.

A central person in the creation of the Motorola 6800 and MOS Technology 6502 families of microprocessor chips, Bill Mensch has later worked primarily on extending and expanding the latter architecture at the Western Design Center. The Center produces a hobbyist computer system called the Mensch Computer, based on the 65816 microprocessor and running the Mensch Works suite of software.

Education, teaching, honors

Mensch graduated with an associate's degree from Temple University in 1966, and received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1971. He has taught classes at Arizona State University, including courses on system-on-a-chip (SoC) IC design. Mensch is a Senior Member of the IEEE. In 2004 he was inducted in the Computer Hall of Fame (hosted by the San Diego Computer Museum, part of the San Diego State University Library), and in 2005 was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Arizona's College of Engineering.

Engineering achievements

Based on his participation in the basic circuit design, definition, and system design of the Motorola 6800 microprocessor and supporting computer chips, Mensch is a co-holder of several 6800 family patents, including the 6800 CPU, 6820/21 PIA, 6850 ACIA, and 6860 modem chip. He was the sole IC design engineer of the 6820/21 PIA, which was the first peripheral IC to have bit-programmable I/O.

Along with three other engineers at MOS Technology, Mensch holds the patent on the decimal correct circuitry on the 6502 CPU. He was responsible for the basic circuit design, transistor sizing, instruction decode logic (attaining to minimize the number of levels of logic so as to achieve higher speed operation), oscillator design and buffer design.

Before leaving MOS Technology in 1977, Bill Mensch became the microprocessor design manager at the company.

The first major effort of Mensch and his team at the Western Design Center was the development of the WDC 65C02, a bug-fixed version of the 6502 CPU implemented in CMOS circuit technology (the original 6502 was made in NMOS). Later, a fully compatible, 16-bit extension of the 6502 family, called the 65816, was to become an important product of the company. (Further information on related products is available in the article about WDC.)

As of 2006, Bill Mensch is still involved with design engineering at WDC in addition to his work as CEO. Among other technical tasks, he has written the upcoming Terbium processor family's data sheets and will be making the major RTL design decisions associated with that processor architecture.

Mentions in press and literature

Articles

* "What's the Proper Goal for an IP Business Model". "Silicon Strategies" editorial.
* "The Chips We Live By". "Forbes magazine" cover story, Michael S. Malone, 6 January 1998. [http://www.forbes.com/asap/1998/0601/066.html (Online version)]
* "A Business Model? for IP Providers". "FSA Forum/Fabless Forum" (member publication of the Fabless Semiconductor Association).

Books

*Bagnall, Brian: "", ISBN 0-9738649-0-7
* Drescher, Nancy (1997). "Which Business?: Help in Selecting Your New Venture". Psi Successful Business Library. Bookworld Services. 358 pp. ISBN 1-55571-390-4.
* Gilder, George (1989). "Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology". New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-50969-1. Touchstone/Free Press reprint ed., 1990: ISBN 0-671-70592-X.

External links

* [http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/WDC_Founder.cfm Western Design Center corporate information page] – With a concise biography of William Mensch
* [http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu/transcripts/mensch.htm Interview with William Mensch] – Transcript of interview made on 9 October 1995 by Rob Walker for Stanford University's Silicon Genesis project
* [http://www.computerhalloffame.org/inductees/2004/1/mensch.html Computer Hall of Fame Inductee: William D. Mensch, Jr, co-inventor of the 6502 microprocessor] – San Diego Computer Museum Hall of Fame
* [http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/news9.cfm Univ. of Arizona Coll. of Engineering’s Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech] – Includes some childhood reminiscences of Mensch