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Amdahl Corporation was founded by Dr. Gene Amdahl, a former IBM employee, in 1970, and specializes in IBM mainframe-compatible computer products. It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu since 1997. The company is located in Sunnyvale, California. Gene Myron Amdahl (born November 16, 1922) is an American computer architect and hi-tech entrepreneur of Norwegian descent, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at International Business Machines (IBM) and later his own companies. ...
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ...
1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ...
An IBM mainframe is a large, high-performance computer made by International Business Machines (IBM). ...
Fujitsu (富士通) is a Japanese company specializing in semiconductors, computers (supercomputers, personal computers, servers), telecommunications, and services, and is headquartered in Tokyo. ...
1997 (MCMXCVII in Roman) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Nickname: Motto: Official website: http://www. ...
Amdahl was a major supplier of large mainframe computers, and later of UNIX and Open systems software and servers, data storage subsystems, data communications products, application development software, and a variety of educational and consulting services. In the 1970s, when IBM had come to dominate the mainframe industry, Amdahl's plug-compatible and often more cost-effective machines gave "Big Blue" some of the little competition it had in that very high-margin computer market segment. Proverbially, during this time savvy IBM customers liked to have Amdahl coffee mugs visible in their offices when IBM salespeople came to visit. A 1990 Honeywell-Bull DPS 7 mainframe Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for mission critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and financial transaction processing. ...
Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
An open system may refer to more than one thing: In computing, an open system (computing) is a computer operating system that provides interoperability, portability or both, particularly Unix systems. ...
In computing, a server is a software application that carries out some task (i. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
A computer network is a system for communication among two or more computers. ...
Application software is a subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly to a task that the user wishes to perform. ...
A programming tool is a program or application that software developers use to create, debug, or maintain other programs and applications. ...
Company origins
Amdahl Corp. launched its first product, the Amdahl 470 V6, in 1975, competing directly against IBM's high-end machines in the then-current System/370 family. (At IBM, Gene Amdahl had co-designed the groundbreaking 32-bit architecture, 24-bit addressing, System/360 line of computers. Applications written for the System/360 can still run, unmodified, on today's zSeries mainframes four decades later.) At the time of its introduction, the 470 V6 was less expensive but still faster than IBM's comparable offerings. For the next quarter century Amdahl and IBM competed aggressively against one another in the high-end server market, with Amdahl grabbing as much as 24% marketshare. Amdahl owed some of its success to antitrust settlements between IBM and the U.S. Department of Justice which assured that Amdahl's customers could license IBM's mainframe software under reasonable terms. 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...
The System/370 is a model range of IBM mainframes introduced in the early 1970s as the successors to the System/360 family. ...
32-bit is a term applied to processors, and computer architectures which manipulate the address and data in 32-bit chunks. ...
In computer architecture, 24-bit is an adjective used to describe integers, memory addresses or other data units that are at most 24 bits (3 octets) wide, or to describe CPU and ALU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ...
System 360 Model 65 operators console, with register value lamps and toggle switches (middle of picture) and emergency pull switch (upper right). ...
Since December, 2001, IBM designates all its mainframes with the name eServer zSeries, with the e depicted in IBMs well-known red trademarked symbol. ...
Antitrust or competition laws are laws which seek to promote economic and business competition by prohibiting anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. ...
Dr. Gene Amdahl was committed to expanding the capabilities of the the uniprocessor mainframe during the late '70s and early 80's. Amdahl engineers, working with Fujitsu circuit designers, developed unique air-cooled chip designs using high speed ECL (emitter-coupled logic) circuit macros packaged in a chip with a heat dissipating cooling attachment (looked like the heat dissapating fins on a motorcycle engine) mounted to the top of the chip. In the 470 and 58x0 systems, the chips were mounted in an 11 by 11 array on multi-layer boards called Multi-Chip Carriers (MCCs), that were positioned in high airflow for cooling. The Amdahl mainframes of this era, unlike IBM systems, were completely air cooled, and did not require "plumbing" for chilled water. The MCCs were mounted horizontally in a large rectangular frame. The MCCs slid into a complex physical connection system and the processor "side panels" interconnected the system, providing clock propogation delays that maintained race-free synchronous operation at relatively high clock speeds (15-18nS base clock cycles). This processor box was cooled with high speed fans generating horizontal air flow across the MCCs.
Additional models of Amdahl uniprocessor systems included the Amdahl 470 V7 and V8 systems (the V8, firt shipped in 1980, incorporated high speed 64K buffers to assist paging, and the first real hardware based virtualization known as "Multiple Domain Facility"). With Gene Amdahl's departure, and increasing influence from Fujitsu, Amdahl broke into large system multi-processor design in the mid-80's with the 5860 and 5880 models.
Always the entrepreneur, Gene Amdahl left the company he founded in 1980, moving on to start a couple of new technology companies. 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...
Market exit Amdahl Corporation enjoyed perhaps its best sales during IBM's transition to CMOS technology in the early to mid 1990s. At first IBM's new mainframe CMOS processors couldn't perform as well as spare-no-expense bipolar technology, giving Amdahl a temporary advantage. However, IBM's CMOS strategy paid off in the long run, allowing IBM's Poughkeepsie factory to produce even faster mainframes at lower cost as the technology matured. By the time IBM introduced its breakthrough 64-bit zSeries 900 in 2000, it was all over for Amdahl's hardware business, which only had 31-bit-addressing Millennium and OmniFlex servers to sell. In late 2000 Fujitsu/Amdahl announced that the company had no plans to invest the estimated US $1 billion (or more) to create an IBM-compatible 64-bit system. Static CMOS Inverter CMOS (see-moss), which stands for complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, is a major class of integrated circuits. ...
The schematic symbols for PNP- and NPN- type BJTs. ...
Poughkeepsie City of Poughkeepsie Town of Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie, Arkansas This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
In computing, a 64-bit component is one in which data are processed or stored in 64-bit units (words). ...
This article is about the year 2000. ...
ESA/390 (Enterprise Systems Architecture/390) is IBMs 31-bit mainframe computing design, copied by Amdahl, Hitachi, and Fujitsu among other competitors. ...
Historically it is unclear whether Fujitsu/Amdahl made the right decision. Despite heavy competition from other server platforms, IBM's zSeries has enjoyed a resurgence due to the widespread adoption of Linux and the escalating transaction volumes (in CICS, IMS, DB2, and other mainframe subsystems) brought about by e-business growth. IBM's zSeries revenues are actually increasing despite declining prices. As of late 2005 IBM is the only manufacturer of production-grade IBM-compatible mainframes. However, Fujitsu announced in late 2005 that EDS would sell its line of "mainframes" outside Japan. Unlike prior models, these Fujitsu systems are not compatible with IBM's and cannot run z/OS, but the announcement has customers wondering if Fujitsu will take the next step in re-entering the (now growing) market. Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ...
CICS® (Customer Information Control System) is a transaction server that runs primarily on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS or z/VSE. CICS is available for other operating systems, notably i5/OS, OS/2, and as the closely related IBM TXSeries software on AIX, Windows, and Linux, among others. ...
Information Management System (IMS) is a joint hierarchical database and information management system. ...
DB2® is IBMs family of information management software products. ...
Electronic business is any information system or application that empowers business processes. ...
2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
EDS may refer to: Ed. ...
z/OS Welcome Screen seen through a terminal emulator The title of this article begins with a capital letter due to technical limitations. ...
Amdahl customer options z/OS V1R5 is the last release of IBM's flagship operating system still able to run on 31-bit mainframes, including Amdahl and older IBM systems. IBM plans to end support for z/OS V1R5 on March 31, 2007 (projected date). However, other operating systems (TPF, VSE, Linux, etc.) may support the 31-bit mainframes beyond that date, so there's still some potential life for Amdahl's hardware. Numerous companies and governments still have Amdahl systems performing useful work as of late 2004, and the company still supports those customers with replacement parts and other services. z/OS Welcome Screen seen through a terminal emulator The title of this article begins with a capital letter due to technical limitations. ...
March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining. ...
2007 (MMVII) will be a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
// Overview TPF is an IBM real-time operating system for mainframes descended from the IBM System/360 family, including zSeries and System z9. ...
VSE (Virtual Storage Extended) is an operating system for IBM mainframe computers. ...
Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ...
It has been designated the: International Year of Rice (by the United Nations) International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO) 2004 World Health Day topic was Road Safety (by World Health Organization) Year of the Monkey (by the Chinese calendar) See the world in...
Arguably IBM did not have a suitable replacement model for many Amdahl customers until the May, 2004, introduction of the zSeries 890. The zSeries 800 also became an attractive replacement for Amdahl machines, especially in late 2005, as that model's typical price fell below $100,000. Other options include running without support, rewriting applications, or running applications under FLEX-ES. FLEX-ES is a mainframe instruction set emulator that supports ESA/390 and z/Architecture operating systems and software. In computer architecture, 31-bit is an adjective used to describe integers, memory addresses or other data units that are at most 31 bits (just shy of 4 octets) wide, or to describe CPU and ALU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ...
z/Architecture (formerly known as ESAME) refers to IBMs 64-bit computing architecture for its top-of-the-line enterprise servers. ...
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