Distinguished Engineer
Hometown: Flandreau
B.S. Engineering Physics,
Gene M. Amdahl earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1952 after graduating from South Dakota State University. His thesis was the design of a floating point computer, the WISC, now at the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley. Part of his professional career was spent at IBM where he worked on simulation studies and machine design for character recognition. He was project engineer and chief designer for the IBM 704; was initial planner for the IBM 709 and 7030; became manager of architecture for the IBM System/360 and in 1965 was named an IBM Fellow. Amdahl left the IBM Corp. in the Fall of 1970 to form and operate his own company, Amdahl Corporation, for the purpose of developing, manufacturing and marketing large-scale computer systems. The Amdahl Corporation captured 22% of the world’s large system market with annual revenues of nearly $3 billion. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was SDSU’s Centennial Scholar.