Amdahl Corporation
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| Wholly owned subsidiary | |
| Genre | Information technology |
| Fate | Bought over |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Founder | Gene Amdahl |
| Defunct | 1997 |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California, United States |
| Products | Mainframe computers, servers, software |
| Services | Educational and consulting services |
| Parent | Fujitsu |
Amdahl Corporation was an information technology company which specialized in IBM mainframe-compatible computer products, some of which were regarded as supercomputers competing with those from Cray Research. Founded in 1970 by Gene Amdahl, a former IBM computer engineer best known as chief architect of System/360, 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 mainframe computers, and later of UNIX and open systems software and servers, data storage subsystems, data communications products, application development software, and a variety of educational and consulting services. In the 1970s, when IBM had come to dominate the mainframe industry, Amdahl created plug-compatible machines that could be used with the same hardware and software as offerings from IBM, but were more cost-effective. Boasting faster uniprocessors, the largest single image, greater performance characteristics and higher reliability, the Amdahl mainframe was compelling to buyers who were willing to consider alternatives to IBM. These machines gave "Big Blue" some of the little competition it had in that very high-margin computer market segment. Proverbially, during this time savvy IBM customers liked to have Amdahl coffee mugs visible in their offices when IBM salespeople came to visit. While winning about 8% of the mainframe business worldwide, Amdahl won a position of market leader in some regions, most notably Charlotte, North Carolina. In the early to mid-1990s, Amdahl won most of the major contracts for mainframes in the Carolinas.
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