Interview with Bill Mensch
Bill Mensch is the inventor of one of the first microprocessors, a revolutionary of the 8-bit and 16-bit computer era. His microprocessors were used in the Apple II, Atari, and Commodore-64, and more.
This is the edited version of the full interview, we begin our conversation with his time at the University of Arizona, where he studied and began to shape his career by doing simulations for nuclear fusion research. He talks about his time as an engineer at Motorola, and his experience with Chuck Peddle and creating the 6502, to later founding the Western Design Center and licensing the first IP for chip designs. Bill created the first company to license chip designs using IP to other companies, while not handling any of the manufacturing himself. His licensees have had a huge impact on the computer world. One of Arizona’s most innovative technology entrepreneurs.
William Bowden: I found Western Design Center by accident, and I looked into your background and the history the 6502 I thought it was really interesting that all this happened in Arizona. So I thought that you'd be receptive to an interview and I appreciate you taking the time for this because I'm a recent ASU grad and you do a lot of philanthropy for higher education. I thought that maybe you'd be open to it.
William Bowden: So I got some questions prepared to start. How has the semiconductor industry changed with your lifetime and what has been your experience witnessing the evolution of the advanced electronics industry in the desert?
Bill Mensch: Okay I don't know if you know the history of semiconductor industry in Arizona. Do you know the background?
William Bowden: A little bit but not too much.
Bill Mensch: Okay you know the second largest semiconductor company in the world in 1971 was Motorola. Motorola was the largest employer in Arizona at that time so actually the only company that was larger in semiconductors was Texas Instruments in Texas. Anyhow so when I graduated from the U of A, so there's a little Wildcat in here, I've got two Wild Cats now and a Sun Devil in there but anyhow going back to your question, Arizona had the leading, I'd say, world leading microprocessor company in the early 70s meaning they were the largest semiconductor company with microprocessors other than Texas Instruments.
But that's another story there and then Intel came on the scene. I don't know when they were founded. I think 1968 (July 18, 1968), maybe, but Intel I don't know when Intel actually arrived here (in Arizona in 1979). That would be a good thing to understand about when Intel came to Arizona, but you know Intel was credited with the first microprocessor. It was a 4004. It was actually designed by Busicom, a calculator company in Japan and so they actually did the semiconductor engineering of the calculator CPU which they called a microprocessor.
At that time in 1971, that was November 1971, they released to the public the 4004, which was I think approved by Busicom to do that now. Back in the day when I joined Motorola, they had already designed two or three calculator chips so actually Motorola could have in a marketing reason called their first calculator chips the first microprocessor. So that's some of the background history of the beginnings of the microprocessor industry.
So when I joined Motorola I was on the training program for a year so I planned to start and I did start in the applications group and I worked with the 6860 modem, which was the modem part of the 6800 microprocessor family of chips. So then I went to the design group to design a critical circuitry for the 6860 modem and then after that, I wanted to get a process design rotation.
It was three months each and so I couldn't actually follow up my design into processing because they didn't have an opening in the C in the MOS process department, so I took an internship in the emitter coupled logic it was bipolar. The highest speed circuits in those days was emitter coupled logic (ECL) circuits. But I knew based upon the characteristics of the MOS technology that it would overtake the emitter coupled logic (ECL). I was the first to design a process simulator process, the actual process on a computer which was the IBM 360, so I had a personal computer at the University of Arizona in 1970-1971 and it was the highest performing supercomputer of its day called the CDC 6600 designed by Seymour Cray. And Cray ended up having his own company at one point with the highest performance computers, but the reason why I call it a personal computer was because in 69-70 I had an undergraduate research internship working for Dr. R.N. Carlisle who just had come back from Princeton where they had the Tokamak (nuclear fusion test reactor) and it was Princeton and UCLA doing the hardware design, and U of A doing software design and simulation.
So I took over a PhD dissertation and I was taking a full load 18 credits of engineering classes, and then in order to get the research position I had to audit two new graduate nuclear classes given by the guy that sponsored my research. So I took 24 credits and my personal computer was a building with the 6600 in it.
So when I came to Motorola, then, I knew I could simulate anything so that's when I started simulating the actual ECL process. The next rotation, which was my final rotation, was in the marketing group and I was doing data sheets, and they asked me to create a spreadsheet. Well, I wrote a spreadsheet to be able to provide IBM with about seven pages of quotations for different size ECL memories and different volumes etc.
But anyhow, when they saw me do that in a couple of days, write a spreadsheet to answer IBM's questions, the guys in the marketing said you have to work in the logic group. Our chips don't work coming out of there we think you need to work there. So, they forced me on the logic group and so the logic group didn't want me, they were holding out for a senior engineer which ended up being Chuck Peddle.
If you know the story about the 6502, it was Chuck Peddle who came there in 1973 and when I was working there from 1972, I was working about a year in the logic group after I got off the training program.
Okay, so that's some of that. Now if you want me to carry it forward to today or through the steps, I went from Motorola to this small company called MOS Technology, Inc. in Pennsylvania and that's where we designed the 6502, actually 6501, 6502 in the support chips and then it was sold, MOS Technology, it was sold to Commodore in 1976. I stayed on for another year. I didn't like what was happening. I wanted to get back to designing microprocessors, so I came back to Arizona. Worked for Integrated Circuit Engineering, Inc. (ICE), Integrated Circuit Engineering founder, was the first integrated circuit design manager at Motorola and his name was Glenn Madland so I worked for Glenn Madland, and what he wanted me to do, was put on seminars for Microprocessors for Management because just like when he started Integrated Circuit Engineering, the company he convinced Motorola to fund him because he was saying an integrated circuit is going to need training on how to use integrated circuits. So, then he got set up by Motorola to train the industry, so I happened to be in a position where then he wanted me to teach the industry how to use a microprocessors.
William Bowden: So that's incredible. From an undergraduate researcher within a year of working at Motorola, correct, right out of college, Chuck found you and that's when you guys went onto MOS Technologies and created the 6502.
Bill Mensch: Well, it was 1974 so it was Chuck and I work together that's a loose way of saying things, he was kind of a wild card. If you read his background, you'll see that he was on marketing junkets or whatever you want to call it, sales trips to talk to customers. He was really good at talking about microprocessors, better than the Motorola design engineers or the marketing people because they didn't have the experience like Chuck had.
Chuck had some experience in small system design if you check his background you'll see that was the case. So Chuck knowing the system design, he and I could get along because I was assigned after working on the 6800 microprocessor, I was assigned the Peripheral Interface Adapter (PIA). The Peripheral Interface Adapter ( 6820/21 PIA) was the first bit programmable I/O system in the world. I have the first patent on the layout, layout was never patented before. Now we have mask works which replace chip patents, but all of my chips have mask patents. Going back to what happened then was on August 19th 1974, eight of us left Motorola.
William Bowden: So, speaking of patents, now you know with your experience licensing designs with IP protections do you think IP is more or less respected due to the intense international competition and security concerns there are today.
Bill Mensch: I'm sorry I missed the first part.
William Bowden: So, with your experiences licensing designs with IP protection do you think IP is more or less respected given that there's more intense international competition and national security concerns. Does that question make sense?
Bill Mensch: Well not exactly, what I'm trying to understand is intellectual property. By the way I was the first company first person to license microprocessors as a business model. What happened before, that is important and so I'll get around to answer your question, but what happened before that is Motorola had one factory, if this one factory stops working, anybody that's using their microprocessors wouldn't have a source.
What did they do? I was on the team, because I was one of the design engineers to transfer the technology to a competitor. Transfer all their technology and for legal reasons you can't monopolize, you can't define the pricing for the company you're setting up to be a second source for your microprocessor, so if you think about that, that means you actually were forced by your customers to set up an equivalent company because they had one factory as your partner if you will, and so when you set that up like that you want to set it up so that you don't change (the design, a carbon copy so to speak).
So you want your partner, your second source, is what they called them, they want your second source to be equivalent to the first source so that means they're making money if they get the customer's project. It's the customer's order right.
That's what happened to MOS Technology. They set up two companies. Synertek in Northern California and Rockwell International. Rockwell is a big system company. They made the space shuttle. They designed a space shuttle. Rockwell is one of my favorite all-time companies that I licensed on my CMOS (6502). So now you can see where that's my experience. You set up the other companies to be able to compete with you so that your customers have another source if you can't deliver. Well guess who supplied most of the chips to Atari and Apple?
It was Synertek. It wasn’t MOS Technology. And they're right in the same neighborhood. So, you see what happens was when I started my own company in 1978, that's when I realized I needed to license my technology as a business model. So, I get fees, royalties, etc. So that's how I created the first semiconductor microprocessor IP business. Then, when Apple was wanting to source the Apple IIgs, the 16-bit Apple, they used my microprocessor. I had licensed GTE in Phoenix here; they had a plant here. So what happens is I get a meeting with Steve Wozniak and they want a second source for GTE (manufacturing).
William Bowden: And you were the second source.
Bill Mensch: I ended up being the second source because I brought NCR, another licensee of mine, from Fort Collins to the meeting with Wozniak, Bob Jones, the representative of NCR out of Fort Collins, said they weren't going to license my 816. So, in that meeting I go, “Bob why are you here, you knew what this meeting was about, so why would you come with a “no”?” I'm thinking I'm going to license another company that day but instead I ended up being a fabless semiconductor company. So, I was the first Fabless Semiconductor Company supplying the 816 to Apple for the Apple IIgs. So now going back to your question, you were asking about the evolution of the technology and then also you're asking about the IP rights.
William Bowden: Well, I was saying do you think IP rights are being respected in the current day among semiconductor manufacturers? With the recent CHIPS Act we're making more chips in Arizona. I think one concern is that IP may not necessarily be respected if we outsource the manufacturing elsewhere and that there's a lot more people out there that can figure out how to reverse engineer how you make a chip and then make it for cheaper and not necessarily respect [the IP] like in your business model. You licensed out your designs to companies like GTE, so in the current day where it's an international economy, is that just as easy to do?
Bill Mensch: I'd say I mean a lot of companies seem to be able to do it well. One way to relate to it is ARM. You know ARM?
William Bowden: Yeah.
Bill Mensch: Yeah, and it goes in all our phones. All these guys, these bad boys, are all built on ARM chips. There's a quad core in there runs at about 1.2 gigahertz. Amazing. I've got 256 gigabytes of memory in here I think. I have 32 gigabytes of RAM. I mean we're talking about something and there's not even a fan. Nope, can't hear a fan.
William Bowden: As cool as can be.
Bill Mensch: This PC, and this little thin PC, has a fan in it, and used to have I had one computer with about 10 fans in it to keep it cool.
So, what I'm getting at here is that ARM technology, they came to me. Herman Houser, he was the financial guy behind ARM, to get it started, but he sent Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson. Sophie Wilson knew the instructions that she wanted, and Steve Furber knew how to microcode the instructions, but neither of them knew how to design semiconductor chips. So, they came to me to see what I was doing, finishing up in 1983, finishing up my 816.
I wanted my sister to lay out the entire 816 all by herself so she did that. So, it was a brother and a sister that laid out the entire 16-bit processor. It's the only brother and sister that will ever. I don't think anybody would bother doing that anymore, but anyhow, they saw what I was doing, and I said, "Well I can't interrupt what I'm doing to help you design your 32-bit RISC processor, but as you see, you can figure it out."
William Bowden: Yeah so the story goes from your previous interviews I've read that they first went to National Semiconductor and they saw 200 Engineers taking six months to develop a 16-bit computer like you guys were doing, and then they visited you at the Western Design Center and you said, "No, no, you guys are smart enough to do it on your own", and you were, I guess unsure about maybe the impact of ARM, or too busy, and that you declined. But they saw that you were able to do it with just a smaller amount of people.
Bill Mensch: Well, I encouraged them to do that. But then the other thing, the surprise that you you've never seen, heard, or never read maybe is that I licensed Ricoh for the Super Nintendo right.
William Bowden: What's Ricoh?
Bill Mensch: Copier company. They make cameras. Ricoh, they had built a half billion-dollar factory back in the in the middle 80s just to supply Nintendo for the chipsets of the Nintendo game systems.
So, they came to me then and asked me what I was going to do. They wanted to license my 32-bit processor. I had a data sheet, but I didn't like the data (design). I didn't think what I had was what they should use. Now, how many times do you license a company, and when they ask you for your next generation you tell them, “I don't think I have what you want.” And on top of that, if you think about it, and look at what's going on in the world today, how many engineers vs support engineers how many you need to have.
By the way, for a RISC processor there's one characteristic that you probably never heard of, that a RISC processor has to have to be called a RISC processor. If you go back to a Microprocessor Report you'll find an edition of that where the editor of that called me about the 6502, knew about the 6502, and published an article saying the 6502 would be considered a RISC processor, which it is, a reduced instruction set processor, but it's missing one characteristic that it has to have to be called a RISC microprocessor, and that one characteristic is it has to have an optimizing C compiler.
To this day I don't have an optimizing C compiler. I don't need an optimizing C compiler because of the way my microprocessor works. A RISC processor loads and stores. Everything is done inside of the processor so all it does is loads and stores, loads and stores, and some other control instructions so what that means is that you have to have machine learning (ML) to optimize the results of your C compilation to strip out redundant instructions to get the code smaller, right, so you don't have code bloat. That's why you need it. That's what a RISC processor is.
So now what happened when I realized that, I realized I don't want the management hassles. I don't want all the other hassles. I want to keep the company small. I want to do it my way. I’m changing the freaking world. I mean really. So, do I need a 32-bit processor? No! So when Ricoh called me or sent me an email, I don't know back in the day they probably, we didn't have email, but anyhow the point is that we communicated and when they asked me that I told them I don't think you'll want what I would come up with.
So, what are your other options? So they said we have five other options. I said, "If you send me the data sheets on them or the spec on them, I'll review them and I'll tell you what I think would be what I would choose." So, they sent me these five, they were like one from the Japanese equivalent to the National Science Foundation they had one I think from China.
But one of them was ARM. So I looked at all of them. I said my choice would be ARM. So I've been promoting ARM since long before they went public. I was promoting them probably in the late, late 80s. So, I was promoting them long before anybody even knew about it in a big way. But anyhow, what I'm saying then is that what if you look at the IP rights then I would look to what ARM is doing to protect their rights. ARM is the elephant in the room.
Now if you look at it there's another elephant coming up called RISC-V and so everybody wants RISC-V, but what do you do when you have a company called Si-Five, you know Si-Five right?
William Bowden: Si-Five, they use the RISC-V instruction set for their designs right.
Bill Mensch: SiFive, those guys are the ones that created RISC-V. They're out of Berkeley.
So, what I'm getting at is they licensed it, or they gave it away open source to the world, and then they created a company to use what they opened up. How does that work?
William Bowden: Well. That's a whole movement of itself. The idea that we're going to open-source RISC-V.
Bill Mensch: But guess, guess what it is. If you have the expertise for it and it works, you find customers. And they optimize it in their own style. So now, if you look at what might come out of China, they'll do their own version, the next guy will do their own version, you'll have a number of different versions, and if you commit to that version and it can't be supplied, then what are you going to do?
Oh, I’m going to take the time to get the engineers and whatever, so what I'm getting at is that's where I was with Rockwell. Rockwell licensed my CMOS (6502) after they had the NMOS from MOS Technology. They came to me. They already had the best engineers in the industry. They knew system design. You can't build a space shuttle without at least having a little bit of engineering so what's interesting here is that one day, they made some changes to my microprocessor, and then so they go, "Oh, we wish we'd have never done that."
But why? Well, now we have to use this one and you use that one we have three or four different versions and we wish we'd never done that. So that's my experience working around someone that was totally capable of doing it their way all by themselves and they license it for me so the answer to your question is there will be. And I promote RISC-V.
When I was at the Computer History Museum (CHM), the Berkeley guys, the guys that designed RISC-V, during the Q&A they say to me, “So Bill, RISC-V what do you think?” What do you think my response was.
William Bowden: You're all for it.
Bill Mensch: Love it. Love it. It's a revolution equal to the 6502 and they go, “Really?”
So, after that, David Patterson was part of it, he's the professor that's behind that stuff, but David Patterson and John Hennessy, previous president of Stanford, they both had their own RISC processor. MIPS. Right. And anyhow, so what happens is they ask me this and then afterward we exchanged emails. I exchange emails with David Patterson, “ Would you send us an email on why you think the RISC-V is a revolution?” Sure. So I typed up something. I haven't looked at my email it's been a couple years, it's been about three or four years I guess or I'm not sure how long ago, but see what the thing is, if I promote this great microprocessor, I'm promoting microprocessors. I just have the one that changed the world.
So, the other thing that's maybe surprising to you that I actually didn't realize how important my 65C02, CMOS version, the Versatile Interface Adapter (VIA) 6522, if you Google 6522 VIA (used in the original Macintosh) and if you get the PDF, it has about 1500 pages on the original Macintosh. Check out the VIA. I thought it was just used for the mouse interface. It was just last week that I'm talking to David Gray who is my vice president for technology and business development, I said, “So I think the VIA was used for the mouse interface and I'm wondering what that looks like.” I mean did they use the serial port on there and if they did, I'd like to see what their schematic is because I thought the VIA was just used for the mouse interface.
It wasn't. It was used for the mouse interface, the keyboard interface, real time clock, they used the pins of the 22 as the I/O system of the original Macintosh working with the 68000. So, Steve Jobs wanted me to make a modification to it because they were working with an asynchronous bus of the 68000. So, he said when we don't have a valid address, the bus is floating all over the place. We'd like it always go to register zero so I made that change to it.
And what happened was Steve Jobs, through his assistant, called me and said, “It works great!” Oh good. “What do you want?”
I go, "What do you mean what do I want? I don't want anything." I wanted to make sure that GTE, my licensee, got good business with you that's all. “So, you don't want anything?”
No. Don't want anything. I want my customer to be happy supplying to the Macintosh.
I didn't know it was going to be that significant. Now the next thing is, I don't know a few months go by, I get another call from Apple, “We really want to give you something for the changes you made to the VIA.”
I go, “Okay, I heard there were 200 Cortlands built”. A Cortland is another type of Apple.
I said, “The Cortland, what I hear through the grape vine is that you built 200 of them for the developers of software for the Apple IIgs, and an Apple IIe case, so if a writer comes into the labs or whatever they see this computer there, we don't want to show them the Apple IIgs yet. So, all of the developers, we have Apple IIe with an Apple IIgs motherboard. "So that I'll take one of those.” “Okay.”
I don't know if I ever turned it on. I have an Apple IIe in my museum. I mean I have a Cortland in my museum because that's what I got to make the Macintosh work.
William Bowden: That's funny.
Bill Mensch: Yeah, I think it's crazy that I just realized how important the VIA was just last week. There you go. So in other words, coming back to your state-of-the-art great next chip, if you look at all Apple builds, Apple is their own fabless semiconductor company. So, they outsourced all their manufacturing of their chips for all their products now. And that's what I did to supply them as a second source on my own chip.
William Bowden: And it's what's killed Intel and it's the future of tech companies in a way. Lots of companies want to copy Apple's success and it's not just you know Apple. Apple had the Macintosh they had the Apple II.
Bill Mensch: They don't have the Apple II anymore.
William Bowden: Well way back in the day.
Bill Mensch: Oh.
William Bowden: Yeah, even now a lot of companies like Salesforce or YouTube, YouTube wants their own custom-made chips for video encoding. It's the future that more companies are going fabless so they can save lots of money on these custom chips.
Bill Mensch: Yeah, and back in the day when I decided to license my technology, I licensed over 60 companies before ARM got involved. Of course, when ARM got involved, then my licensing kind of dried up right. So actually, I'm still you know swinging for the fences but what am I doing today that would say, how do you stay in business for forty how many years now? 46 years.
And so you stay small. Do it your way. Keep your passion involved. Whatever right. So what am I doing today? I'm licensing colleges and universities on my technology.
William Bowden: That's interesting and speaking of colleges and universities I noticed recently that WDC is making, has made like a, like a chip package for Ben Eater. I'm a big fan of Ben Eater when I first watched his video it made me immediately want to build an adder and I kinda stopped there but I love the guy and I noticed. So, when did you guys get involved with creating the WDC kit for people to learn?
Bill Mensch: We, I didn't have anything to do with that.
William Bowden: Nothing?
Bill Mensch: He did it all. I don't know if you know the background of Ben Eater. I would suggest if you haven't seen it. Sal Khan of Khan Academy. Do you know his background with Khan Academy?
William Bowden: I know, yes, I know. Ben Eater worked at Khan Academy and he's self-taught and he got into making the 8-bit PC but the WDC stuff is totally new. I didn't realize that was just people figuring it out and they put it together, okay.
Bill Mensch: But if you haven't seen the interview of Ben Eater and Sal Khan, I highly recommend you watch the interview. He's the one that created the technology behind Khan Academy so when you're watching somebody assemble a board like he does, you don't want to spend eight hours watching him, so he has automated that, so it's like a time lapse thing. So, you can watch it go together. It's just like they're building a dorm right here right and we should have a time lapse camera on it so you could see it being built in five minutes rather than two months,
So, you see what I'm saying here is Ben Eater had set up the Khan Academy with the technology for training. What he came up with is the 6502. He came up with that idea. But if you look at Wilson Mines’s company website, 6502.org, Garth Wilson is the moderator for 6502.org. Garth Wilson had an equivalent to what Ben Eater did. So, if you go look at the history of it, Garth Wilson built a computer, a 6502, one VIA, ROM, and RAM, some wires so that's what Ben Eater did without giving any, I don't think he's ever given any credit to 6502.org or Garth Wilson.
But what I did do in 1994 to 1998 you'll never find me in any of the records of ASU, but for five years I taught System-on-Chip (SoC) design using the 6502. What was I doing? I didn't get paid one dollar. I did it because I wanted to do it. I did it because the kids were getting hired right out of my classes. It was a graduate course. So, I'm teaching. I've got a BS from the University of Arizona, I'm teaching graduate students at ASU, right.
So, for five years, when they created ASU East, which is now called Polytechnic, we moved the class from here, where I am, from ASU East/ASU Polytechnic. So, I taught out there. That's where they taught the fighter pilots and I was in one of the classrooms and the kids were getting hired right out of my class. So why? Because nobody else was teaching System-on-Chip (SoC). But what was on the chip? A 6502, 6522, ROM and RAM and the pads.
That's what Ben Eater is doing. And guess what I'm doing now. This right here, this chip here, this board, that's an Intel MAX10 FPGA chip (soon to be PSG, a separate independent company).
Notice Intel's my friend? That's an Intel MAX10 as an Intel FPGA with what I was teaching ASU students 1994 to 1998. So, what else is here? These are connectors. These are called Click connectors? Do you know about what those are for?
William Bowden: The pins you plug in?
Showing off the GPS and W-Fi modules in green.
Bill Mensch: Modules like this one here. I'll show you something working. So, I have a power bank right here I got at the University of Chicago. I'm going to squirt some electrons into there it should flash this. If that flashed when I turned it on that's the GPS radio receiver, and then here are the coordinates right here in Mirabella. They block a lot of the signals so I can't get the GPS but if I go on my patio here, I can get my coordinates of my patio and that's this is an OED display I2C interface. These are I2C interfaces four pin interfaces this is from SparkFun.
SparkFun this is an I2C with a Qwiic connector, they call it. So these are modules there's about a thousand different sensors, communications and actuators you can put on here. This is a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (module). I don't have the code for this but this is a Wi-Fi /Bluetooth module. So this, what's in here we call the SOC100. It's a W65C02SOC100 in FPGA. So this is what we're licensing to colleges and universities. So the first college was Fort Lewis College (FLC) in Durango, Colorado. And the other university is the university of Notre Dame in South Bend. They have a good football team. Occasionally they play for the national championships however they are using…. do you know the RP2040?
William Bowden: No, I don't. What is that for?
Bill Mensch: Raspberry Pi is what okay.
William Bowden: Raspberry Pi, which just Raspberry Pi, RP2040?
Bill Mensch: RP2040. It's a Raspberry Pi chip.
Bill Mensch: They sell for a couple of bucks. So Notre Dame is using the RP6502. You can Google the RP6502.
William Bowden: The Raspberry Pi [foundation] has created a 6502 chip. And have you licensed the 6502?
Bill Mensch: No they did not. ARM did. They run an ARM core that runs 100-200 megahertz okay it's a really good chip it's a very popular chip and it sells for a couple bucks it sells for less than a 6502.
William Bowden: So, what do you think of the shift from hardware fundamentals you know more software the based design at least in the chip world you know we have EDA tools, we have SPICE. There's a lot of libraries out there for the simulation or layouts but do you think that takes away from the engineers of the future?
Bill Mensch: Well, I think yes and no. The engineer skill base changes. What you’re learning changes. So if you look at the RP6502, it uses a 6502, a 6522, this is on the board, using my DIP, my dual-in-line 40 pin dual inline (DIP) plastic chips. It uses a 6502, 6522, a RAM chip, I think 32 K byte RAM chip, and two RP2040s. Each one of them runs at, I don't know, 100 to 200 megahertz. One of them feeds it the program and the other one is the I/O interface so you can have HDMI or whatever you want for a screen and so all of the I/O is on Raspberry Pi, the two 2040 chips.
Okay this is what they're teaching at Notre Dame and surprisingly my granddaughter, who is a freshman now, she's in the middle of her freshman year, I introduced my granddaughter and her friend that she introduced me to, and then I thought, "Hey why don't I introduce you to a couple of professors at Notre Dame?"
So, the one professor says, "Oh I'd like them to help me get my class set up for the RP6502," and I'm thinking, cool. So I introduced the professors to my granddaughter and her friend who's a freshman and now they're working as interns to help this professor build a class for seniors. When he found out my granddaughter was a freshman he goes, “Oh, I thought she was a junior”. I go, “No, she just started.”
So anyhow I have fun with this because we are going to change the world again. So, if you can think of it, it’s like are there more ants than there are what raccoons? Just picking things that survive. There's a lot more ants than there are raccoons. So, what does that mean? It means that when I get all these kids learning how to work with my technology, they are going to be creative.
William Bowden: The kids are the ants in learning 6502?
Bill Mensch: Well, the ants are the little 6502s doing what you want them to do.
William Bowden: I have one more question prepared. So, with the recent CHIPS Act investment, with your experience seeing the rise and fall of companies like Commodore, does your experience give you pause in pondering the permanence of these massive investments in Arizona?
Bill Mensch: Okay well, I would say the Commodore 64 or even the Apple II and all of those aren't really good models for what is happening now. What's happening now is it's either built on North American soil or it's going to be built in Asia. It could be built in Europe. I would hope it would be built in Europe, Asia, and here, because the future of man is just going to do more of what we already know.
End.