The AIM alliance was a landmark partnership from 1991 to the late 1990s between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. The goal was to create a vast new computing platform of hardware, operating systems, and applications that challenged the market dominance of the Wintel platform of Microsoft Windows on Intel processors. AIM's new hardware was based on IBM's POWER architecture, a second-generation RISC architecture for enterprise computing. The large-scale POWER was reduced at Apple's direction into the single-chip PowerPC architecture suitable for mass market personal computers.
AIM had three main initiatives. The first, nicknamed PowerPC alliance, was the creation of the PowerPC family of microprocessors. The second was the formation of two independent joint-venture companies: Taligent Inc., which was tasked with bringing Apple's robust Pink prototype to market as a next-generation object-oriented operating system; and Kaleida Labs, which developed a cross-platform multimedia scripting language. The third initiative was the creation of an open standard for PowerPC-based hardware, first as the PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP) and later as the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP), which allowed many manufacturers to build open-standard computers running an industry-wide variety of operating systems.
Taligent and Kaleida Labs became commercial failures after several years, reabsorbed by their parent companies. The open hardware standards failed to gain permanent traction, in part because Apple CEO Steve Jobs canceled the Mac OS licensing program program for third-party CHRP hardware in 1998. AIM effectively dissolved by the late 1990s. However, the PowerPC architecture was a significant success, powering Macintosh computers from 1994 until Apple's transition to Intel processors in 2006. PowerPC was prolifically adopted by many vendors in markets such as embedded systems, supercomputing, and video game consoles, and gained a lasting legacy.
History
Development
From the 1980s into the 1990s, the computer industry was moving from a model of just individual personal computers toward an interconnected world, where no single company could afford to be vertically isolated anymore. Microsoft's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly threatened competition industrywide, and their competing Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) consortium was recently formed to promote x86 and MIPS architectures.
In the late 1980s, Apple used Motorola 68000 series CPUs for its computers. Intel's Andy Grove tried to persuade Apple to transition to x86, but CEO John Sculley and others believed that CISC microprocessors such as x86 would not be competitive with RISC. Kuehler called Apple President Michael Spindler, who bought into the approach for a design that could challenge the Wintel PC model. Sculley was even more enthusiastic.
On July 3, 1991, Apple and IBM signed a non-contractual letter of intent, proposing an alliance and outlining its long-term strategic technology goals. Its main goal was creating a single unifying open-standard computing platform for the whole industry, made of a new hardware design and a next-generation operating system. IBM intended to bring the Macintosh operating system into the enterprise and Apple intended to become a prime customer for the new POWER hardware platform. The urgency for the AIM alliance was heightened by Microsoft's recent formation of the competing Advanced Computing Environment (ACE), a 21-company consortium intended to establish a new industry standard based on x86 and MIPS architecture processors. Some analysts viewed AIM as a direct, and perhaps late, counter-alliance to the formidable ACE. Some viewed AIM as a bold but risky attempt to create a new "mainstream" of computing, with one expert noting the formidable challenge ahead: "Apple and IBM are going to have to be more than friends. They are going to have to be brothers."
On October 2, 1991, the historic AIM alliance was officially formed with a contract between Apple CEO John Sculley, IBM Research and Development Chief Jack Kuehler, and IBM Vice President James Cannavino. Kuehler said "Together we announce the second decade of personal computing, and it begins today" and Sculley said this would "launch a renaissance in technological innovation", as they signed the foot-high stack of papers comprising the contract. The New York Times called it "an act that a year ago almost no one in the computer world would have imagined possible". It was so sweeping that it underwent antitrust review by the US government.
The alliance's hardware is based on the PowerPC processorsthe first of which, the PowerPC 601, is a single-chip version of IBM's POWER1 CPU. Both IBM and Motorola would manufacture PowerPC integrated circuits for this new platform. The computer architecture base is called PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform), later complemented with OpenFirmware and renamed CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform). IBM used PReP and CHRP for the PCI version of IBM's RS/6000 platform, which was adapted from existing Micro Channel architecture models, and changed only to support the new 60x bus style of the PowerPC.