hackertube.io

Oral History of Gary Davidian, part 2 of 2

Computer History Museum · interview · Watch on YouTube

History of computingCompilers, interpreters & program analysisComputer architecture & CPUs

What it is

Part two of a Computer History Museum oral history with Gary Davidian, covering his work on the 68000 emulator for PowerPC at Apple, Power Computing, clean-room contracting and later performance optimization work. It is nearly three hours long.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Pointed to as a primary-source interview on Apple's architecture transitions, emulation and microcode work.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2022, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “There's lots of interesting stuff from this era in the CHM's oral histories.”

    Oral history of an engineer behind the 680x0 emulator and microcode work

    andrewf, 2022-11 · Recommendation · in “Rereading: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder”

  2. “he was quite bit involved with microcoding.”

    Interview where Davidian discusses his involvement with microcoding

    mesrik, 2025-03 · Recommendation · in “Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: apple, powerpc, 68k emulation, microcode, oral history

Also recommended by the same people