Gene Amdahl

Quotes

• “The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture,”
• “We tend to think that the phenomenon of engineers and scientists being at the top of a company is something that started with Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak or Gary Kildall. But this just isn’t the case. Even back in the days when IBM was the single most important computer company, it was possible for one of its engineers to escape and make an impact that disturbed even Big Blue.”
• “The first characteristic of interest is the fraction of the computational load which is associated with data management housekeeping. This fraction has been very nearly constant for about ten years, and accounts for 40% of the executed instructions in production runs.”

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Key facts

Born

( 1922-11-16 ) November 16, 1922, Flandreau, South Dakota , U.S.

Died

November 10, 2015 (2015-11-10) (aged 92), Palo Alto, California , U.S.

Alma mater

South Dakota State University ( BS , 1948), University of Wisconsin ( MS ; PhD , 1952)

Known for

Founding Amdahl Corporation ; formulating Amdahl's law ; IBM 360, 704

Spouse

Marian Delaine Quissell

Children

Andrea Leigh Amdahl Beth Delaine Amdahl Carlton Gene Amdahl

Awards

National Academy of Engineering (1967), Computer History Museum Fellow (1998)

Fields

Entrepreneur, Computer science

Institutions

Degrees in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin

Thesis

The Logical Design of an Intermediate Speed Digital Computer (1953)

Doctoral advisor

Robert G. Sachs

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image

Amdahl march 13 2008.jpg

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