[COFF] In memoriam: Gene Amdahl

[Clem Cole]

According to my friend Russ Robulen (his coworker, lead on the 360/50,
worked on /91 and later lead for the IBM ASC),  Amdahl wanted the byte to
be 7-bits for S/360, but Fred Brook's overruled him.  Brooks was said to
have thrown Amdahl out his office and told him "not come back unless it was
a power of 2", as "he could not program it sanely otherwise."   Amdahl
semi-won the 24/32 bit war.   Brooks let he have a 24 bit basic word, only
if it stored it as 32 bits and ensured that all pointers were stored in the
same.  Russ says that Amdahl always thought both choices were a terrible
waste of hardware.   Gordon Bell later said, those two choices were the
most important in S/360's lasting impact.

Clem

On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 5:10 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> We lost computer architect Gene Amdahl on this day in 2015; responsible
> for "Amdahl's Law" (referring to parallel computing), he had a hand in the
> IBM-704, the System/360, and founded Amdahl Corporation (a clone of the
> 360/370 series).
>
> -- Dave
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