Gene Amdahl, IBM Designer Who Founded Rival, Dies at 92
Source: Bloomberg News
Gene Amdahl, who helped IBM usher in general-purpose computers in the 1960s and challenged the company’s dominance a decade later with his eponymous machines, has died. He was 92.
He died on Nov. 10 at Vi at Palo Alto, a continuing care retirement community in Palo Alto, California, his wife Marian Amdahl said in a telephone interview. The cause was pneumonia, and he had Alzheimer’s disease for about five years.
Amdahl shepherded the design of the IBM Series/360, the first computer system not built for a specific purpose and one that offered modularity, interoperability -- software made for one machine could run on another -- and the use of cheaper third-party peripherals. Announced in 1964, it made IBM the king of mainframes, closet-sized data crunchers, by expanding the market to everyday businesses such as airlines and carmakers from a user base limited to government offices and universities.
“That architecture has endured for 50 years,” Mike Chuba, an analyst who has followed the industry for more than three decades at Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Inc., said in a 2014 telephone interview. “Most credit-card transactions will go through a mainframe at some point.”
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-12/gene-amdahl-ibm-computer-designer-who-founded-rival-dies-at-92
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Javaman
(62,530 posts)Not being a computer geek, I am not getting whatever it is you are trying to say.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)about a rival company building an IBM clone. One of the guys building it, worked for IBM.
It's interesting look at that industry circa 1983. I think it's loosely based on Jobs and Wozniak.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)more of a Luddite than anything else these days, with a heavy layer of Survivalism.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)That's the only way I let the Kid see anything...for her own safety and development
Javaman
(62,530 posts)certainly "adult" situations are presented.
But being a former computer geek from that era, it's kind of a trip in the wayback machine for me.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)ah, youth.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)since the first season is on Netflix, I'm sure it's available in the Library.
Paulie
(8,462 posts)So, Which side were you on, Eagle or Eclipse? 
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The best part was the Star Trek game...multiple overlays on a pizza oven....and very good detail!
William Seger
(10,779 posts)Great book; I found it fascinating because I had just gotten into programming, but I remember reviewers being surprised that such a seemingly dry subject could read like a compelling novel.
unc70
(6,115 posts)Amdahl, Blau, and Brooks (alphabetical) designed the IBM 360 in the early 1960s. Dr Fred Brooks was the manager and for the operating system. RCA was the company that built the clone systems, also in the 1960s.
Amdahl and his company built some of the largest and most powerful computers for several decades.
The computers in the show were at the other end of the spectrum, the far end.
As one with 50+ years in the industry, I find the TV show unwatchable, for many reasons.
I still see Dr. Brooks around town. He was my mentor.
RIP Gene.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)I was a young geek at the time the show takes place, still fiddling around with cobalt.
What do you find unwatchable about it?
unc70
(6,115 posts)Lots of little things affect me like chalk on the blackboard. Some are technical, others about the people and the business. It is probably the common criticism of movies and TV by those who know a lot about the subject -- whether medicine, law, military, or anything else.
Maybe I should check out the show again and see if I tolerate it better now.
longship
(40,416 posts)A lesson which tech companies have still not learned. Fred Brooks was prescient.
The Mythical Man Month.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)...
"Childhood and education[edit]
Amdahl was born to immigrant parents of Norwegian and Swedish descent in Flandreau, South Dakota. After serving in the Navy during WWII he completed a degree in engineering physics at South Dakota State University in 1948. He went on to study theoretical physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and completed his doctorate there in 1952 with a thesis titled A Logical Design of an Intermediate Speed Digital Computer and creating his first computer, the WISC. He then went straight from Wisconsin to a well-paid position at IBM in June 1952."
...
wiki.
So, 28 years of living on the taxpayer before he got a job? No wonder we are making people like him take out student loans that will cripple their productivity.
Much better instead to live under our new austerity, write policy that funds our bank$ter/donors in the vain hope that it will trickle down upon us, and then deny relief to our neighbors while patting ourselves on the back for how low we are keeping that nasty ol' deficit.
I mean, what did we get for our investment in that guy anyway?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Crying blocks up my sinuses something awful, and I have to sing this weekend.
We talk about the economics over in the group on Stock Market Watch every day the market is open...and Weekend Economists when it isn't. Usually.
Festivito
(13,452 posts)First one went to NASA.
At Ford Motor Company they had to twist the arms of their operators to even try the Amdahl. Once they tried it, they would not go back to that IBM machine that would break down too much.
A million dollars of air conditioning was needed for the IBM machines, aside from cost of the machine itself. That left plenty of cooling power for that Amdahl that did not need so much.
It was a risky investment. But, boy, did it pay off.
Sad about the Alzheimers.
As life rides go, Gene's ride was nearly perfect. Goodbye, good man!
