2015-11-13

Gene Amdahl, Pioneer of Mainframe Computing, Dies at 92 - The New York Times

Gene Amdahl, Pioneer of Mainframe Computing, Dies at 92 - The New York Times Michael J. Flynn, a computer scientist at Stanford University and former colleague of Dr. Amdahl’s at IBM, said the 360 series “set the design philosophy for computers for the next 50 years, and to this day it’s still out there, which is incredible.”

“This same instruction set,” he added, “is still bringing in billions of dollars for IBM.”
Dr. Amdahl is remembered at IBM as an intellectual leader who could get different strong-minded groups to reach agreement on technical issues.
This is what enterprise computing looks like: the same instruction set for 50 years, backwards compatible and stable. Every hour of software development invested is captured and retained.