Gene Myron Amdahl (November 16, 1922 – November 10, 2015) was an American computer architect and high-tech entrepreneur, chiefly known for his work on

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

s at IBM and later his own companies, especially

Amdahl Corporation Amdahl Corporation was an information technology company which specialized in IBM mainframe-compatible computer products, some of which were regarded as supercomputers competing with those from Cray Research. Founded in 1970 by Gene Amdahl, a for ...

. He formulated

Amdahl's law In computer architecture, Amdahl's law (or Amdahl's argument) is a formula which gives the theoretical speedup in latency of the execution of a task at fixed workload that can be expected of a system whose resources are improved. It states tha ...

, which states a fundamental limitation of

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

Childhood and education

Amdahl was born to immigrant parents of Norwegian and Swedish descent in

Flandreau, South Dakota Flandreau is a city in and county seat of Moody County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 2,372 at the 2020 census. It was named in honor of Charles Eugene Flandrau, a judge in the territory and state of Minnesota. He is credite ...

. After serving in the

Navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

during World War II he completed a degree in

engineering physics Engineering physics, or engineering science, refers to the study of the combined disciplines of physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, particularly computer, nuclear, electrical, electronic, aerospace, materials or mechanical en ...

South Dakota State University South Dakota State University is a public land-grant research university in Brookings, South Dakota. Founded in 1881, it is the state's largest and most comprehensive university and the oldest continually-operating university in South Dakota. The ...

in 1948. He went on to study theoretical physics at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

under Robert G. Sachs. However, in 1950, Amdahl and Charles H. "Charlie" Davidson, a fellow PhD student in the Department of Physics, approached Harold A. Peterson with the idea of a digital computer. Amdahl and Davidson gained the support of Peterson and fellow electrical engineering professor Vincent C. Rideout, who encouraged them to build a computer of their unique design. Amdahl completed his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

at UW–Madison in 1952 with a thesis titled ''A Logical Design of an Intermediate Speed Digital Computer'' and created his first computer, the

Wisconsin Integrally Synchronized Computer The Wisconsin Integrally Synchronized Computer (WISC) was an early digital computer designed and built at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Operational in 1954, it was the first digital computer in the state. Pioneering computer designer Gen ...

(WISC). He then went straight from Wisconsin to a position at IBM in June 1952.

IBM

At IBM, Amdahl worked on the

IBM 704 The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states: The type 704 Electronic Data-Pro ...

, the

IBM 709 The IBM 709 was a computer system, initially announced by IBM in January 1957 and first installed during August 1958. The 709 was an improved version of its predecessor, the IBM 704, and was the third of the IBM 700/7000 series of scientific co ...

, and then the ''Stretch'' project, the basis for the

IBM 7030 The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three tim ...

. He left IBM in December 1955, but returned in September 1960 (after working at Ramo-Wooldridge and at

Aeronutronic Aeronutronic was a defense related division of Ford Aerospace, owned by Ford Motor Company, and based in Newport Beach, Orange County, California. The Engineering and Research Center campus was located on Jamboree Road at Ford Road, overlooking ...

). He quit out of frustration with the bureaucratic structure of the organization. In an interview conducted in 1989 for the

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, he addressed this: On his return, he became chief architect of

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...

and was named an

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...

in 1965, and head of the ACS Laboratory in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...

Amdahl Corporation

He left IBM again in September 1970, after his ideas for computer development were rejected, and set up

Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...

with aid from

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

. Competing with IBM in the mainframe market, the company manufactured " plug-compatible" mainframes, shipping its first machine in 1975 – the Amdahl 470V/6, a less expensive, more reliable and faster replacement for the System 370/168. By purchasing an Amdahl 470 and plug-compatible peripheral devices from third-party manufacturers, customers could now run S/360 and S/370 applications without buying actual IBM hardware. Amdahl's software team developed VM/PE (Virtual Machine/Performance Enhancement), software designed to optimize the performance of IBM's

MVS Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. IBM developed MVS, along with OS/VS1 and SVS, as a successor to OS/360. It is unrelated ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

when running under IBM's

VM operating system VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. The following versi ...

. By 1979, Amdahl Corporation had sold over US$1 billion of V6 and V7 mainframes and had over 6,000 employees worldwide. The corporation went on to distribute an IBM-plug-compatible

front-end processor A front end processor (FEP), or a communications processor, is a small-sized computer which interfaces to the host computer a number of networks, such as SNA, or a number of peripheral devices, such as terminals, disk units, printers and tap ...

(the 4705) as well as high-performance

disk drives Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are consi ...

, both jointly developed with Fujitsu engineers. At the 1967

Spring Joint Computer Conference The Joint Computer Conferences were a series of computer conferences in the United States held under various names between 1951 and 1987. The conferences were the venue for presentations and papers representing "cumulative work in the omputerfield ...

, Amdahl, along with three other computer architects, most notably

ILLIAC IV The ILLIAC IV was the first massively parallel computer. The system was originally designed to have 256 64-bit floating point units (FPUs) and four central processing units (CPUs) able to process 1 billion operations per second. Due to budget con ...

architect

Daniel Slotnick Daniel Leonid Slotnick (1931–1985) was an American mathematician and Computer architecture, computer architect. Slotnick, in papers published with John Cocke (computer scientist), John Cocke in 1958, discussed the use of parallel computing, parall ...

, engaged in a discussion on future architectural trends. 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. This set of arguments resulted in two, major and lesser, "laws" of computer performance regarding sequential versus parallel processing. These arguments continue to this day.

1979–2015: Entrepreneur

Amdahl left his eponymous company in August 1979 to set up

Trilogy Systems Trilogy Systems Corporation was a computer systems company started in 1980. Originally called ACSYS, the company was founded by Gene Amdahl, his son Carl Amdahl and Clifford Madden. Flush with the success of his previous company, Amdahl Corporati ...

, together with his son Carl, and Clifford Madden. With over US$200 million in funds, Trilogy was aimed at designing an

integrated chip An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

for even cheaper mainframes, but the chip development failed within months of the company's $60 million public offering; thereafter, the company focused on developing its

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) c ...

technology and, when that project failed, in 1985, Trilogy merged into

Elxsi Elxsi Corporation was a minicomputer manufacturing company established in the late 1970s in Silicon Valley, USA, along with a host of competitors ( Trilogy Systems, Sequent, Convex Computer). The Elxsi processor was an Emitter Coupled Logic (ECL) d ...

, a computer maker with its own CPU design. Elxsi also did poorly and Amdahl left in 1989, having already founded his next venture, Andor International, in 1987. Andor hoped to compete in the mid-sized mainframe market, using improved manufacturing techniques developed by one of the company's employees, Robert F. Brown, to make smaller, more efficient machines. Production problems and strong competition led the company into bankruptcy by 1995. 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. One such machine, from 1997, was the ESP/490 (Enterprise Server Platform/490), an enhancement of IBM's P/390 of the

System/390 The IBM System/390 is a discontinued mainframe product family implementing the ESA/390, the fifth generation of the System/360 instruction set architecture. The first computers to use the ESA/390 were the Enterprise System/9000 (ES/9000 ...

family. Since then, CDS has changed its name and narrowed its focus. As Xbridge Systems, the company now builds software to scan mainframe datasets and database tables for sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security and other government identification numbers, sensitive medical diagnosis information that can be linked to an individual, and other information such as that needed for electronic discovery. In November 2004, Amdahl was appointed to the board of advisors of Massively Parallel Technologies. He died on November 10, 2015, in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

, from pneumonia, six days shy of his 93rd birthday. He also had

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

in the last years of his life. Gene Amdahl visit to Amdahl 2008

Awards and recognition

Amdahl was named an

in 1965, became a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 1967 and was recognized as the Centennial Alumnus of

in 1986. He has numerous awards and patents to his credit and has received

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

s from his two alma maters and two other institutions as well. Amdahl was elected Distinguished Fellow of the

British Computer Society Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in infor ...

(DFBCS) in 1979, and in 1983 he was awarded the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award by the

IEEE Computer Society 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 operati ...

"in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the design, applications and manufacture of large-scale high-performance computers." In 1998, he was made a Fellow of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

"for his fundamental work in computer architecture and design, project management, and leadership." In November 2007, Amdahl was recognized with the

SIGDA SIGDA, Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Design Automation , is a professional development organization for the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) community. SIGDA is organized and operated exclusively for educati ...

Pioneering Achievement Award. A banquet dinner in his honor featured a short talk by Amdahl on his career, and a panel debate on the future of parallel processing. Panelists included John Gustafson (known for

Gustafson's law In computer architecture, Gustafson's law (or Gustafson–Barsis's law) gives the speedup in the execution time of a task that theoretically gains from parallel computing, using a hypothetical run of ''the task'' on a single-core machine as the b ...

). The talk and debate were both videotaped, and are available through the SIGDA Web page, and the ACM Digital Library.

References

External links

Oral history interview with Gene M. Amdahl

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. Amdahl discusses his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin and his design of WISC. Discusses his role in the designing of several computers for IBM including the

IBM 7030 Stretch The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three t ...

IBM 701 The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May ...

, and

. He discusses his work with

Nathaniel Rochester Nathaniel Rochester (February 21, 1752 – May 17, 1831) was an American Revolutionary War soldier, and land speculator, most noted for founding the settlement which would become Rochester, New York. Early life Nathaniel Rochester was born ...

and IBM's management of the design process. Mentions work with Ramo-Wooldridge,