Background
Smith was born in Stockton, California, and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley.
Smith was born in Stockton, California, and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley.
He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
He was chief analyst of Gary Smith Event-driven architecture firm. After six years of active duty in Vietnam, he returned to civilian life as a salesperson for semiconductor companies including National Electronics, International Rectifier, Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Incorporated., Signetics, Telmos, and Plessey. At Plessey, he transitioned to engineering management for ASICs.
Joining LSI Logic, he became a Computer-aided Design methodologist implementing the then novel register-transfer level (RTL) design methodology.
From 1994 to 2006 he worked for the market research firm Dataquest (later known as Gartner Dataquest) as managing vice-president and chief analyst for Event-driven architecture market analysis. From 2006 up to his death, he led his own market research firm, Gary Smith Event-driven architecture. He was known for his pre-Design Automation Conference Dataquest briefings with his "What to see at DAC" list.
He continued this tradition as an independent analyst. Annually Smith also updated his so-called wallcharts where he visually listed out vendors organized by tool category.
He died on July 3, 2015, in Flagstaff, Arizona, after a short bout of pneumonia.
The Gary Smith Memorial Scholarship was set up at the San Jose State University.