Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

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jebmke
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Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by jebmke »

Those of us greyhair/nohair computer wonks note the passing of Gene Amdahl, the pioneer of mainframe computing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/techn ... front&_r=0

The IBM 360 I worked with in the early 70s probably had less computing power than many of today's kitchen appliances. Yet, they were amazing machines. Amdahl was a legend.
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cheese_breath
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by cheese_breath »

We had a couple Amdahl mainframes (I think they were 5860s) in our computer room in the mid 1980s. Worked just as well as IBM at a lower price.
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Kenkat
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by Kenkat »

I did some of my first programming classes at the University of Cincinnati on their Amdahl mainframe in the early 80's. Started with punch cards and eventually moved up to a line editor and then the very high tech TSO full screen editor before eventually moving on to a DEC VAX system. Gene Amdahl was one of the pioneers of modern computing.
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bertilak
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by bertilak »

jebmke wrote:The IBM 360 I worked with in the early 70s probably had less computing power than many of today's kitchen appliances. Yet, they were amazing machines. Amdahl was a legend.
The big difference is data capacity (volume and speed). Your DeLonghi Magnifica Super-Automatic can't do a four-tape merge-sort while printing paychecks on one printer and sales reports on another. Your iPhone can't either.
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daveatca
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Gene Amdahl, pioneer

Post by daveatca »

bertilak wrote:Your DeLonghi Magnifica Super-Automatic can't do a four-tape merge-sort while printing paychecks on one printer and sales reports on another.
On the other hand, your MVS mainframe can't make coffee. So, there!

Gene Amdahl will be missed. A true pioneer.
hicabob
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by hicabob »

As far as I know Amdahls were the first "clones" in the computer world. IP lawyers were not as involved with computer architecture back then.
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bertilak
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Re: Gene Amdahl, pioneer

Post by bertilak »

daveatca wrote:
bertilak wrote:Your DeLonghi Magnifica Super-Automatic can't do a four-tape merge-sort while printing paychecks on one printer and sales reports on another.
On the other hand, your MVS mainframe can't make coffee. So, there!
If only we'd thought of that at the time! :beer (That's a coffee cup)
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Epsilon Delta
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Re: Gene Amdahl, pioneer

Post by Epsilon Delta »

daveatca wrote:
bertilak wrote:Your DeLonghi Magnifica Super-Automatic can't do a four-tape merge-sort while printing paychecks on one printer and sales reports on another.
On the other hand, your MVS mainframe can't make coffee. So, there!
That's just a question of the peripherals.

I did multi-tape sorts while printing reports on a 286. I could have done it on a 8088 but I'd have had to write my own OS. The people I was working with thought I had a mainframe in the back room.

Never hooked up the coffee maker, but I did control a bunch of lab devices with the parallel port, so I could have if I'd thought about it.
Ron
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by Ron »

bertilak wrote:The big difference is data capacity (volume and speed). Your DeLonghi Magnifica Super-Automatic can't do a four-tape merge-sort while printing paychecks on one printer and sales reports on another. Your iPhone can't either.
You can't do a merge unless you do the sort first (always sort/merge :wink: ).

Worked with/on a 470 mainframe in the early 80's; we had a 370/168 on one side of the room and a 470 V7 facing it on the other side. What made the 470 unique was the "accelerator" key that (for a fee) could be turned on and increased the system clock time to up throughput. We had the authorization to turn it on during the latter time of a processing time-frame (usually 3rd shift) to ensure the on-line apps would be available for the 8 am office folks to start work.

- Ron
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cheese_breath
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by cheese_breath »

hicabob wrote:As far as I know Amdahls were the first "clones" in the computer world. IP lawyers were not as involved with computer architecture back then.
I believe you're right.
The surest way to know the future is when it becomes the past.
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telemark
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Re: Gene Amdahl, pioneer

Post by telemark »

Epsilon Delta wrote:
daveatca wrote:
bertilak wrote:Your DeLonghi Magnifica Super-Automatic can't do a four-tape merge-sort while printing paychecks on one printer and sales reports on another.
On the other hand, your MVS mainframe can't make coffee. So, there!
That's just a question of the peripherals.

I did multi-tape sorts while printing reports on a 286. I could have done it on a 8088 but I'd have had to write my own OS. The people I was working with thought I had a mainframe in the back room.

Never hooked up the coffee maker, but I did control a bunch of lab devices with the parallel port, so I could have if I'd thought about it.
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Re: Gene Amdahl: 1922-2015

Post by Alex Frakt »

Locked. Nothing against Mr. Amdahl, but this isn't a personal consumer topic.
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