PowerPC Platform Specification Announced -- At COMDEX in Las Vegas last week, Apple, IBM, and Motorola jointly announced the "PowerPC Platform" specification, formerly referred to as the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP). A long time in development, this specification directly challenges Intel-based computing architectures, and is designed to spell out the details of a unified computer architecture based on the PowerPC chip. In theory, a machine designed to this specification can run any operating system designed for the architecture. At the moment, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, and Sun say they plan to support the PowerPC Platform with future operating systems, and many chip and component manufacturers have announced their intention to develop and support the PowerPC Platform as well. It's expected the first machines built to the PowerPC Platform spec will be available in the middle of 1996, with Apple's first Macintoshes supporting the platform sometime in 1997. [GD]

http://chrp.apple.com/
http://www.austin.ibm.com/tech/chrp/chrp_ book.html