- AIM alliance
The AIM alliance was an alliance formed in September 1991 between
Apple Computer , IBM andMotorola to create a new computing standard based on thePowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominantWintel computing platform with a new computer design and a next-generationoperating system . It was thought that the CISC processors from Intel were an evolutionary dead-end inmicroprocessor design, and that sinceRISC was the future, the next few years were a period of great opportunity.The CPU was the
PowerPC , a single-chip version of IBM'sPOWER1 CPU. Both IBM and Motorola would manufacture PowerPC chips for this new platform. The computer architecture base was called CHRP (forCommon Hardware Reference Platform ) and later named PReP (forPowerPC Reference Platform ). CHRP was in fact a barely-modified version of IBM's existingRS/6000 platform, changed only to support the new 60x bus style of the PowerPC.Apple and IBM created two new companies called
Taligent andKaleida Labs as part of the alliance. Taligent was formed from a core team of Apple software engineers to create a next-generation operating system, code-named "Pink", to run on the platform. Kaleida was to create an object-oriented, cross-platform multimedia scripting language which would enable developers to create entirely new kinds of applications that would harness the power of the platform.Efforts on the part of Motorola and IBM to popularize PReP/CHRP failed when Apple, IBM, and Taligent all failed to provide an operating system that could run on it and when Apple and IBM couldn't reach agreement on whether the reference design must or must not have a parallel port.Fact|date=June 2007 Although the platform was eventually supported by several
Unix flavours as well asWindows NT , theseoperating systems generally ran just as well onIntel -based hardware so there was little reason to use the PReP systems. TheBeBox , designed to runBeOS , used some PReP hardware but as a whole was not compatible with the standard. Kaleida folded in 1995. Taligent was absorbed into IBM in 1998. Some CHRP machines shipped in 1997 and 1998 to no fanfare.The PowerPC program was the one success that came out of the AIM alliance; Apple started using PowerPC chips in their Macintosh line starting in 1994. Almost every Mac featured a PowerPC processor from then until 2006, when they transitioned all their models to
Intel processors, due to disappointment with the direction and performance of PowerPC development. The chips have also had success in the embedded market, and all three majorseventh-generation video game console s feature chipsets derived from the PowerPC architecture at their core.ee also
The
Advanced Computing Environment group defined a competing "new PC" initiative known asAdvanced RISC Computing (ARC), based on theMIPS architecture . TheWindows NT original boot architecture was based on the ARC standards.Power.org
Power.org was founded in 2004 by IBM and 15 partners with focus on develop, enable, promote and drive adoption ofPower Architecture technology, i.e.PowerPC andPOWER and applications based on it.Freescale joined in 2006 and today the consortium consists of over 40 companies and institutions.References
* [http://zmoore.net/CACM%20PPC%20Alliance.pdf The PowerPC Alliance – Charles R. Moore and Russel C. Stanphill, 1994]
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