Gene Amdahl

Gene Amdahl (2008)

Gene Myron Amdahl (born November 16, 1922 in Flandreau , South Dakota , † November 10, 2015 in Palo Alto , California ) was an American computer architect and hi-tech entrepreneur of Norwegian descent. He became internationally known through his work in the field of mainframes at IBM and through the companies he later founded, especially the Amdahl Corporation . He also formulated Amdahl's law , a model for the acceleration of programs through parallel execution.

Life

childhood and education

Amdahl was born in 1922 to immigrants in Flandreau, South Dakota. He served in the Navy during World War II . In 1948 he graduated from South Dakota State University with a degree in engineering physics. He then studied theoretical physics at the University of Wisconsin and received his doctorate in 1952 with the design of his first computer, the WISC . In June of the same year he took a well-paying position at IBM.

IBM & Amdahl

At IBM Amdahl worked on the development of the IBM 704 and the IBM 709 . He was also involved in the stretch project that formed the basis for the IBM 7030 . In December 1955 he left IBM for the first time. He then worked for Ramo Wooldridge and Aeronutronic . He returned to IBM in September 1960 to work on the development of the System / 360 family. In 1965 he was made an IBM Fellow and head of the ACS Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. The second time he left IBM in September 1970 because his ideas were rejected. With the support of Fujitsu , he founded the Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale , California and entered the mainframe market. In 1975 he delivered his first machine - the Amdahl 470 V6. This was a more compatible, cheaper and more powerful replacement for the System / 360 165 . The Amdahl 470 V6 and the associated peripheral devices from other manufacturers enabled companies to run System / 360 applications without having to order the then very expensive IBM hardware.

1979–2015: Amdahl, the entrepreneur

Amdahl left his company in August 1979 to found Trilogy Systems. With over $ 200 million in capital, the company's goal was to design even cheaper chips for mainframes. Within months of the company's $ 60 million IPO, the project failed. The company has now shifted its efforts into the area of VLSI technology. These efforts were doomed to failure too - the company merged with Elxsi Corporation in 1985 . Elxsi also developed poorly, so Amdahl left the company in 1989. However, in 1987 he had founded another company - Andor International. In this he now set his hopes to gain a foothold in the mainframe market through improved production techniques and smaller, more efficient machines. Production problems and strong competitive pressure led the company to bankruptcy in 1995 .

In 1996, Amdahl and others founded Commercial Data Servers (CDS), also in Sunnyvale, in order to be able to continue to participate in the mainframe market. This company focused on super-cooled processors for physically smaller, compact machines. One of these machines that CDS produced in 1997 was the ESP / 490 (Enterprise Server Platform), a further development of the P / 390 from IBM. The company is known today under the name Xbridge Systems and has other focuses - it produces networking software such as Data Host Connect to connect mainframes and open systems. Since March 2005 Amdahl has not been mentioned as a member of the management on the Xbridge homepage.

In November 2004, Amdahl became a member of the Board of Advisors of Massively Parallel Technologies .

Awards

In 1965 Amdahl was made an IBM Fellow. He became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1967 and was named South Dakota State University Alumnus of the Century in 1986. He has registered several patents under his name and received a total of four honorary doctorates . In 1976 he received the W. Wallace McDowell Award and in 1987 the Eckert-Mauchly Award .

Web links

Commons : Gene Amdahl - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ In Memoriam: Gene Amdahl 1922–2015. In: cacm.acm.org , November 12, 2015, accessed November 13, 2015.
↑ The man who saw red. On the death of Gene Amdahl. heise online, accessed on November 14, 2015 .

personal data
SURNAME	Amdahl, Gene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Amdahl, Gene Myron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American computer architect and hi-tech entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH	November 16, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Flandreau , South Dakota , United States
DATE OF DEATH	November 10, 2015
Place of death	Palo Alto , California , United States

[1] In Memoriam: Gene Amdahl 1922–2015. In: cacm.acm.org , November 12, 2015, accessed November 13, 2015.

[2] The man who saw red. On the death of Gene Amdahl. heise online, accessed on November 14, 2015 .