Amdahl Corporation
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.
Amdahl was a major supplier of large mainframes, UNIX and Open Systems software and servers, data storage subsystems, data communications products, applications development software, and a variety of educational and consulting services. During the seventies, when IBM dominated the computer industry, Amdahl's plug-compatible machines gave IBM some of the little competition it had. Proverbially, savvy IBM customers liked to have an Amdahl mug visible in their office when IBM salespeople came to visit.
Amdahl Corp. launched its first product, the Amdahl 470 V6, in 1975, competing directly against IBM's high-end machines of the System/360 family (which Gene Amdahl had designed when he worked for IBM) and the successor System/370 range. At the time of its introduction, the 470 V6 was less expensive yet faster than IBM's similar offerings. At the turn of the millennium, Amdahl Corp. and IBM were still the main competitors in this part of the market. As of 2004, Amdahl Corp. offers the Millennium and OmniFlex servers, compatible with the IBM zSeries (System/390) in 31-bit mode.¹
Gene Amdahl left the company in 1980, after a year as Chairman Emeritus, to start new IT enterprises.
Notes
- In late 2000, Fujitsu/Amdahl announced they would not develop a 64-bit S/390 compatible processor, based on perceived industry trends judged to show a declining S/390 market. IBM has decided the future S/390 market is promising enough to demand a 64-bit architecture.
