Gene Myron Amdahl was born on November 16, 1922, and passed away on November 10, 2015. He was an American computer architect and a business leader in technology. He is most known for his work on large computers at IBM and later at his own company, Amdahl Corporation. He developed Amdahl's law, which explains a basic rule about how parallel computing works.

Childhood and education

Amdahl was born in Flandreau, South Dakota, to parents who were immigrants from Norway and Sweden. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he earned a degree in engineering physics from South Dakota State University in 1948.

He then studied theoretical physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with Professor Robert G. Sachs. In 1950, Amdahl and Charles H. "Charlie" Davidson, a fellow PhD student in the Department of Physics, shared an idea for a digital computer with Professor Harold A. Peterson. Peterson and another professor, Vincent C. Rideout, who taught electrical engineering, supported their plan and encouraged them to build a computer based on their own design. Amdahl finished his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1952 with a thesis titled A Logical Design of an Intermediate Speed Digital Computer. He built his first computer, the Wisconsin Integrally Synchronized Computer (WISC). Then he moved directly from Wisconsin to a job at IBM in June 1952.

IBM

At IBM, Amdahl worked on the IBM 704, the IBM 709, and then the Stretch project, which became the foundation for the IBM 7030. He left IBM in December 1955 but returned in September 1960 after working at Ramo-Wooldridge and Aeronutronic. He left again because he was frustrated with the complicated rules and procedures at IBM. In an interview in 1989 with the Charles Babbage Institute, he explained this.

After returning to IBM, he became the main designer of the IBM System/360. In 1965, he was given the title of IBM Fellow, and he led the Advanced Computing Systems Laboratory (ACS) in Menlo Park, California.

Amdahl Corporation

In September 1970, he left IBM again because his ideas for computer development were not accepted. He then started Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale, California, with major financial support from Fujitsu.

Amdahl Corporation competed with IBM by making "plug-compatible" mainframes, which are computers that work with IBM systems. The company released its first machine in 1975—the Amdahl 470V/6. This computer was less expensive, more reliable, and faster than IBM's System 370/168. Customers could use IBM software on Amdahl's computers without buying IBM hardware by purchasing Amdahl mainframes and compatible parts from other companies. Amdahl's software team created VM/PE, a program designed to improve the performance of IBM's MVS operating system when used with IBM's VM operating system.

By 1979, Amdahl Corporation had sold more than US$1 billion worth of V6 and V7 mainframes. The company employed over 6,000 people worldwide. It also produced an IBM-plug-compatible front-end processor called the 4705 and high-performance disk drives, both developed with Fujitsu engineers.

At the 1967 Spring Joint Computer Conference, Amdahl and three other computer architects, including Daniel Slotnick, who worked on the ILLIAC IV computer, discussed future computer designs. Amdahl explained his views, both in writing and during a speech, about the physical limits he believed would affect the performance of special features in new computers. These ideas led to two important rules about how computers handle tasks one at a time versus doing many tasks at once. These rules are still studied today.

1979–2015: Entrepreneur

In August 1979, Amdahl left the company named after him to start Trilogy Systems with his son, Carl, and Clifford Madden. Trilogy had over $200 million in funding and aimed to create a large-scale microprocessor for cheaper mainframes. However, the chip development failed shortly after the company raised $60 million in a public stock sale. After that, Trilogy focused on developing VLSI technology, but that project also failed. In 1985, Trilogy merged with Elxsi, a computer company that had its own CPU design. Elxsi struggled, and Amdahl left in 1989. Earlier, in 1987, he had started a new company called Andor International. Andor aimed to compete in the mid-sized mainframe market by using improved manufacturing techniques created by one of its workers, Robert F. Brown, to build smaller, more efficient machines. However, production problems and strong competition led to the company’s financial failure by 1995.

In 1996, Amdahl co-founded Commercial Data Servers in Sunnyvale. The company again developed mainframe-like machines, but this time with new super-cooled processor designs for smaller systems. One example was the ESP/490 (Enterprise Server Platform/490), an improved version of IBM’s P/390 from the System/390 family. Over time, the company changed its name to Xbridge Systems and focused on creating software to scan mainframe data and databases for sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, medical records, and data needed for legal investigations.

In November 2004, Amdahl was appointed to the board of advisors for Massively Parallel Technologies. He passed away on November 10, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, from pneumonia, six days before his 93rd birthday. In his final years, he also lived with Alzheimer’s disease.

Awards and recognition

Amdahl was named an IBM Fellow in 1965. He became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1967 and was recognized as the Centennial Alumnus of South Dakota State University in 1986. He has received many awards and patents. He also earned Honorary Doctorates from his two universities and two other institutions.

In 1979, Amdahl was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. In 1983, he was awarded the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award by the IEEE Computer Society for his work in designing, using, and making large-scale high-performance computers.

In 1998, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his important work in computer architecture and design, project management, and leadership.

In November 2007, Amdahl received the SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award. A banquet dinner was held in his honor, where he gave a short talk about his career. A panel debate on the future of parallel processing also took place. Panelists included John Gustafson, known for Gustafson's law. The talk and debate were recorded and are available on the SIGDA Web page and the ACM Digital Library.