Gene Amdahl has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#21

Post by cant_kant » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:06 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #8

Honest question for those who got received CS/Engineering degrees in the last 10 years, did Amdahl's Law come up? I've seen programming courses go away from assembler/c/c++ over the years to Java and then scripting languages at a couple local schools. I wonder if the history/theory side changed as well.

I came across Amdahl's law repeatedly in my CS course. Interestingly, I also came across it when studying for a MBA, in the context of operations management and speeding up business processes.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#22

Post by jhallenworld » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:09 AM UTC

I wonder if it's worth it for someone else to try to make a mainframe clone. I remember some company selling the Hercules emulator on an HP IA64 machine- PSI I think.

It would be fun to try to make an FPGA version.

Oh yeah, PSI: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/02/ibm_buys_psi/

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#23

Post by kenrick95 » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:11 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #8

Honest question for those who got received CS/Engineering degrees in the last 10 years, did Amdahl's Law come up? I've seen programming courses go away from assembler/c/c++ over the years to Java and then scripting languages at a couple local schools. I wonder if the history/theory side changed as well.

Yes, I'm taking CS now and I saw it last semester in "Advanced Computer Architecture", a year-3 core module for CS and CE student in NTU, Singapore.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#24

Post by voidlogic » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:13 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #8

Honest question for those who got received CS/Engineering degrees in the last 10 years, did Amdahl's Law come up? I've seen programming courses go away from assembler/c/c++ over the years to Java and then scripting languages at a couple local schools. I wonder if the history/theory side changed as well.

Amdahl's Law was taught in my Alma mater's "computer architecture" course. This course was primarily around CPU operation and law was specifically brought up in regards to instruction mixes and provided CPU execution units, but was then generalized.

This was the 2nd in a series of the four required courses "low level" courses (assembly programming, computer architecture, operating systems, compilers).

I am a systems software developer and Amdahl's Law is one of my standard interview questions.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#25

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:14 AM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #6

I think he deserves a HN Back Bar tribute.

Agreed, one of the giants.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#26

Post by Animats » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:15 AM UTC

I met Gene Amdahl once, when I took a summer course in computer architecture at UCSC. We got a tour of the Amdahl plant. They had a huge prototype CPU built out of TTL, which they built before making custom ICs. Each board in the prototype became one IC. Each row of cards in the prototype became one board. Each rack became one row of cards. That was how you debugged hardware designs in 1975.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#27

Post by dang » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:17 AM UTC

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#28

Post by jmspring » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:25 AM UTC

bricestacey wrote: post #15

jmspring wrote: post #8

Honest question for those who got received CS/Engineering degrees in the last 10 years, did Amdahl's Law come up? I've seen programming courses go away from assembler/c/c++ over the years to Java and then scripting languages at a couple local schools. I wonder if the history/theory side changed as well.

CS degree. Never heard of it. I graduated about 5 years ago.

Thanks. It's always interesting to see what people with comparable degrees encounter.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#29

Post by avmich » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:33 AM UTC

circlecrimson wrote: post #14

We really need to rid the world of Alzheimer as soon as possible. The bittersweet thing is that today's golden era titans of innovation may not live long enough for these anti-aging treatments to be deployed.

I highly suspect those titans of innovations - in many areas - just happen to be among the first to get to relatively low hanging fruits in a new area... This pattern repeats in many fields.

Not to diminish Amdahl's achievements, of course.

Re: Gene Amdahl has died

#30

Post by oso2k » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 5:54 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #8

Honest question for those who got received CS/Engineering degrees in the last 10 years, did Amdahl's Law come up? I've seen programming courses go away from assembler/c/c++ over the years to Java and then scripting languages at a couple local schools. I wonder if the history/theory side changed as well.

Definitely at CSULA. It's taught in OS, Multiprocessing in CS undergraduate, and in Multimedia and Networking in EE/CE at the grad level.