Gene Amdahl obituary

Father of the IBM mainframe computers that still run the world

Whenever you draw cash from your bank, take out insurance, book a flight, or shop in a large department store, the transaction was probably handled by an IBM mainframe originally designed by a former South Dakota farm boy, Gene Amdahl, who has died aged 92. Amdahl's System/360 mainframes, announced in 1964, transformed IBM, and transformed computing. They became such an essential part of large-scale data processing that most Fortune 500 companies are still using them 50 years later.

The S/360's legacy includes the now-ubiquitous 8-bit byte, though Amdahl had argued for the option to use old-style 6-bit bytes as well. That idea was vetoed by Fred Brooks, Amdahl's boss, who also led the development of the S/360's operating systems.

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