Harry L. "Nick" Tredennick was an American manager, inventor,

VLSI Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...

design engineer and

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

who was involved in the development for Motorola's

MC68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

and for IBM's Micro/370 microprocessors. He held BSEE and MSEE degrees from

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on , and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the main institution of the five-institution Texas Tech University Sy ...

, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

at Austin. Tredennick was named a Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

; the citation reads "For the design and implementation of the execution unit and controller of the MC68000 workstation microprocessor". He died July 26, 2022, in an

All-terrain vehicle An all-terrain vehicle (ATV), also known as a light utility vehicle (LUV), a quad bike, or simply a quad, as defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); is a vehicle that travels on low-pressure tires, with a seat that is stra ...

accident.

Career

* From 1977 to 1979, he was a Senior Design Engineer at

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorol ...

, where he specified and designed the microcode and the controller core of the

microprocessor, one of the first microprocessors designed by structured VLSI design. * From 1979 to 1987, Tredennick worked on microcode and logic design for the IBM Micro/370 microprocessor at the

Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...

. While at IBM, in 1983/1984 he took sabbatical leave to teach computer organization, chip design, and the Flowchart Method at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

. * In 1986, Tredennick co-founded NexGen and was director of product development there in 1987-1988. NexGen later developed the Nx686 microprocessor which became the

AMD K6 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

when the company was acquired by

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

in 1996. * As Chief Scientist of

Altera Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015. The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ran ...

Corporation from 1993 to 1995 he began advocating

Reconfigurable Computing Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing fabrics like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Th ...

as an essential paradigm shift in computer science, a topic he spoke and published on extensively. * In 1988 he started Tredennick, Inc. to analyze microprocessor industry trends and provide consulting on VLSI CPU design and reconfigurable computing. Tredennick was an advisor and investor in numerous pre-IPO startups and a member of technical advisory boards for numerous companies. In 2007 he joined the board of Patriot Scientific. In parallel to his professional career, Tredennick served as a pilot with the U.S. Air Force (active, reserve, and National Guard) from 1970–1984, attaining the rank of major, as Aerospace Engineering Duty Officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1986-2000 at the rank of captain, and on the Army Science Board from 1994–2001 and from 2006.

Publications

Tredennick wrote several books and numerous articles in professional and trade magazines; inter alia, as a Contributing Editor of ''Microprocessor Report'', and on the Editorial Advisory Boards for ''Microprocessors and Microsystems'', for ''Embedded Developer's Journal'', and ''IEEE Spectrum'', as well as editing the ''Gilder Technology Report'' on leading-edge components. He has often appeared as panelist and keynote speaker on international conferences. Tredennick held nine U.S. patents on subjects ranging from microprocessors to reconfigurable computing.

Selected publications

* Microprocessor Logic Design: The Flowchart Method. * Microprocessor-based Computers. * Implementation Decisions for the MC68000 Microprocessor. * The Case for Reconfigurable Computing.

Sources

ACM profile

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tredennick, Nick 1946 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American inventors Cockrell School of Engineering alumni Texas Tech University alumni