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.
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.
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.
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.
(Online version)* "A Business Model? for IP Providers".
FSA Forum/Fabless Forum (member publication of the
Fabless Semiconductor Association).
Books* Bagnall, Brian (2005).
On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. Variant Press. 452 pp.
* Drescher, Nancy (1997).
Which Business?: Help in Selecting Your New Venture. Psi Successful Business Library. Bookworld Services. 358 pp. ISBN 1555713904.
*
Gilder, George (1989).
Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671509691. Touchstone/Free Press reprint ed., 1990: ISBN 067170592X.
*
Western Design Center corporate information page – With a concise biography of William Mensch
*
Interview with William Mensch – Transcript of interview made on 9 October 1995 by Rob Walker for
Stanford University's Silicon Genesis project
*
Computer Hall of Fame Inductee: William D. Mensch, Jr, co-inventor of the 6502 microprocessor – San Diego Computer Museum Hall of Fame
*
Univ. of Arizona Coll. of Engineering's Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech – Includes some childhood reminiscences of Mensch
