Before Cerebras, there was Amdahl: How legendary US engineer was way ahead of his time with wafer-scale integration and plotted supercomputer performance for the humble PC 43 years ago

Long before wafer-scale processors became associated with AI accelerators and ultra-large chips, Gene Amdahl was already trying to turn an entire silicon wafer into a single processor.

Amdahl’s reputation alone made the industry pay attention. Known as the architect of IBM’s System/360 mainframe family, he helped define enterprise computing before leaving IBM in 1970 to found Amdahl Corporation, which became the leading maker of IBM-compatible mainframes.

By the time he launched Trilogy Systems Corp. with his son Carl, he had already proven he could challenge the industry giant on its own turf. Trilogy’s executives believed their reputations were on the line, and the company was pursuing funding on a scale unusual for a startup in the early 1980s.