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Oral History of Gary Davidian, part 2 of 2

Computer History Museum

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  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Gary Davidian, computer engineer

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

1.8K views7 years ago2 recommendations

History and cultureSystems programmingHistory of computingPeople who shaped computingOperating systems

Gary Davidian discusses his work at Apple on the Motorola 68000 emulator, Macintosh clones, and performance optimization.

Interviewed by Hansen Hsu on 2019-03-14 in Mountain View, CA X8931.2019 © Computer History Museum Gary Davidian discusses his work at Apple on the Motorola 68000 emulator for PowerPC, his subsequent work at Macintosh clone maker Power Computing, additional legal clean room contracting work, work on PowerPC accelerator cards for Newer Technology, and later contracting work doing performance optimizations for such software as Metrowerks’ Java virtual machine and codecs for Apple’s Final Cut Pro, QuickTime, iTunes, and Aperture. * Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information - computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102781078 Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection. Catalog Number: 102781079 Lot Number: X8931.2019

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended for its insights into Apple's transition to PowerPC, microcoding, and the history of emulator development.

andrewfon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Rereading: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder”

You might be interested in this Computer History Museum oral history of Gary Davidian, who among other things (1) worked on the "rival project" from Soul (2) was hired by NEC to bolster their lawsuit defense by writing microcode for the Intel 8086 (3) wrote the 680x0 emulator Apple launched their PowerPC line with. Transcript: link link Video: link link to this video There's lots of interesting stuff from this era in the CHM's oral histories.

mesrikon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry”

Hi Ken, Nice article. While reading I remembered that I watched some time ago the Oral History of Gary Davidian and he was quite bit involved with microcoding. And if I were you I would try asking him if he could be able to give you some ideas where to get more information about microcode workings and development. Here are links to that interview, if you have time to watch it. It's in two parts. - link - link to this video Cheers, :-) riku

evaneykelenon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Rosetta 2 creator leaves Apple to work on Lean full-time”

In a previous discussion the name of Gary Davidian is mentioned who also — initialy single-handed — did amazing work on architecture changes at Apple. There’s an interview with him in the Computer History Museum archive. link link to this video