Title
Tredennick, Nick oral historyCatalog Number
102781583Type
Moving imageDescription
Harry L. (Nick) Tredennick was born in Schenectady NY in 1946. After a move to Texas, Nick attended Texas Tech and graduated with BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering. After earning his degree, he went into the Air Force, where he was trained as a pilot. He was released to the reserves a couple of years later, at which time he entered the University of Texas to pursue a PhD in EE.After graduation, he served as an assistant professor at the school until Tom Gunter of Motorola walked into his office and offered him a job working on the next generation 68000 microprocessor in 1977. His responsibilities at this time were mainly to implement in logic the designs created by others.
That project was a big success and then he was asked to see if the microcode could be reprogrammed to run the IBM 360 instruction set. After working on that project in collaboration with IBM for a period of time, he moved on to work at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center where he worked on Fiber Optic Communication for a time before pursuing a passion to write a book on microprocessor logic design.
As a result of this work and becoming a proponent of the CISC microprocessor architecture, he was invited to spend a sabbatical at UC Berkeley teaching on this subject. At the end of his sabbatical, he didn’t want to return to New York, so IBM gave him an office at their local research center in Los Gatos.
He continued working on his Micro 370 project until being invited to be a co-founder of a startup called NexGen MicroSystems. He later left after disagreements with management and the Board. After leaving, he set up his own consulting company before joining Altera as Chief Scientist. That job lasted a couple of years before he resigned in 1995.
The following years, Nick spent doing patent testimony, continuing to serve in the military reserves, writing for the Microprocessor Report, working on cryptography related topics, and a wide range of personal interests.
Date
2019-06-04Participants
| Fairbairn, Doug, Interviewer |
| Tredennick, Nick, Interviewee |
Publisher
Computer History MuseumPlace of Publication
Mountain View, CADuration
02:39:46Format
MOVCategory
Oral historyCollection Title
CHM Oral History CollectionCredit
Computer History MuseumLot Number
X9075.2019Related Records
| 102781582 | Tredennick, Nick oral history |