The 88000 (m88k for short) is a RISC instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Motorola. The 88000 was Motorola's attempt at a home-grown RISC architecture, started in the 1980s. Having arrived some two years after its competition, in the form of the SPARC and MIPS, the 88000 never managed to catch on.
Originally called the 78000 as a homage to their famed 68000 series, the design went though a tortured development path, including the name ...
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The 88000 (m88k for short) is a RISC instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Motorola. The 88000 was Motorola's attempt at a home-grown RISC architecture, started in the 1980s. Having arrived some two years after its competition, in the form of the SPARC and MIPS, the 88000 never managed to catch on.
Originally called the 78000 as a homage to their famed 68000 series, the design went though a tortured development path, including the name change, before finally emerging in April 1988.
In the late 1980s several companies were actively watching the 88000 for future use, including NeXT, Apple Computer and Apollo Computer, but all gave up by the time the 88110 was available in 1990.
There was an attempt to popularize the system with the 88open group, similar to what Sun Microsystems was attempting with their SPARC design. It appears to have failed in any practical sense.
In the early 1990s Motorola joined the AIM effort to create a new RISC design based on the IBM POWER design....
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