The PowerOpen Environment (POE), created in 1991 from the

AIM alliance The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the POWER instruction set architecture. It ...

, is an

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...

for running a

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

-based

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

on the

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

computer architecture.

History

The

was announced on October 2, 1991, yielding the historic first technology partnership between Apple and IBM. One of its many lofty goals was to somehow eventually merge Apple's user-friendly graphical interface and desktop applications market with IBM's highly scalable Unix server market, allowing the two companies to enter what Apple believed to be an emerging "general desktop open systems market". This was touched upon by Apple's November 1991 announcement of A/UX 3.0. The upcoming A/UX 4.0 (never actually released) would target the PowerOpen Environment ABI, merge features of IBM's

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set *Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgium ...

variant of Unix into

A/UX A/UX is Apple Computer's Unix-based operating system for Macintosh computers, integrated with System 7's graphical interface and application compatibility. Launched in 1988 and discontinued in 1995 with version 3.1.1, it is Apple's first official ...

, and use the

OSF/1 OSF/1 is a variant of the Unix operating system developed by the Open Software Foundation during the late 1980s and early 1990s. OSF/1 is one of the first operating systems to have used the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University, and ...

kernel from the Open Software Foundation. A/UX 3.0 would serve as an "important migration path" to this new system, making Unix and System 7 applications compliant with PowerOpen. A/UX 4.0 and AIX were intended to run on a variety of IBM's POWER and PowerPC hardware, and on Apple's

based hardware. The need for the POE reduced due to the increasing availability of

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating systems on PowerPC, such as

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

distributions and AIX. The

PowerOpen Association The PowerOpen Environment (POE), created in 1991 from the AIM alliance, is an open standard for running a Unix-based operating system on the PowerPC computer architecture. History The AIM alliance was announced on October 2, 1991, yielding the hi ...

was formed to promote the POE and test for conformance, and disbanded in 1995. That year, other AIM elements disbanded

Overview

The POE contains

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

and ABI specifications. The presence of the ABI specification in the POE distinguishes it from other open systems such as

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...

and

XPG4 X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of in ...

, since it allows platform-independent binary compatibility, which is otherwise typically limited to particular hardware. Derived from

, the POE conforms to industry open standards including POSIX, XPG4, and

Motif Motif may refer to: General concepts * Motif (chess composition), an element of a move in the consideration of its purpose * Motif (folkloristics), a recurring element that creates recognizable patterns in folklore and folk-art traditions * Moti ...

. The POE is hardware bus independent. System implementations can range from laptop computers to

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

s. It requires a multi-

user Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...

, multitasking operating system. It provides

networking Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

support, an

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

extension, a

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

Application Services extension, and Motif.

References

{{reflist
PowerOpen ABI specification

''This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and is used under the

GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the r ...

.''

IBM software

History

Overview

See also

References