Gene Myron Amdahl was an American computer architect and high-tech entrepreneur, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at IBM and later his own companies, especially Amdahl Corporation.
17 Facts About Gene Amdahl
2.
Gene Amdahl formulated Amdahl's law, which states a fundamental limitation of parallel computing.
3.
Gene Amdahl then went straight from Wisconsin to a position at IBM in June 1952.
4.
At IBM, Gene Amdahl worked on the IBM 704, the IBM 709, and then the Stretch project, the basis for the IBM 7030.
5.
Gene Amdahl left IBM in December 1955, but returned in September 1960.
6.
Gene Amdahl quit out of frustration with the bureaucratic structure of the organization.
7.
Gene Amdahl left IBM again in September 1970, after his ideas for computer development were rejected, and set up Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale, California with aid from Fujitsu.
8.
Gene Amdahl articulated his arguments, both verbally and in three written pages, on the fundamental physical limitations that he theorized would govern the performance of any special feature or mode introduced to new machines.
9.
Gene Amdahl left his eponymous company in August 1979 to set up Trilogy Systems, together with his son Carl, and Clifford Madden.
10.
Elxsi did poorly and Gene Amdahl left in 1989, having already founded his next venture, Andor International, in 1987.
11.
Gene Amdahl co-founded Commercial Data Servers in 1996, again in Sunnyvale, and again developing mainframe-like machines but this time with new super-cooled processor designs and aimed at physically smaller systems.
12.
In November 2004, Gene Amdahl was appointed to the board of advisors of Massively Parallel Technologies.
13.
Gene Amdahl died on November 10,2015, in Palo Alto, California, from pneumonia, six days shy of his 93rd birthday.
14.
Gene Amdahl had Alzheimer's disease in the last years of his life.
15.
Gene Amdahl was named an IBM Fellow in 1965, 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.
16.
Gene Amdahl has numerous awards and patents to his credit and has received Honorary Doctorates from his two alma maters and two other institutions as well.
17.
In November 2007, Gene Amdahl was recognized with the SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award.