Workplace OS was to be a new computer operating system from IBM, planned as its attempt to move several of its operating system products to a common microkernel to improve portability and reduce maintenance costs. Based on Mach 3.0, the Workplace OS was supposed to run DOS, OS/2, Microsoft Windows, OS/400, and AIX applications, and run on PowerPC, ARM, and x86 computers, ranging in size from PDAs to workstations to large servers. Born in 1991, the project failed miserably, and was eventually abandoned in the mid-1990s. An operating system is a special computer program that manages the relationship between application software, the wide variety of hardware that makes up a computer system, and the user of the system. ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a computer technology firm headquartered in Armonk, NY, USA. The company, which was founded in 1888 and incorporated June 15, 1911, manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services. ... Graphical overview of a microkernel A microkernel is a minimal form of computer operating system kernel providing a set of primitives, or system calls, to implement basic operating system services such as address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication. ... Mach is an operating system kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computation. ... It has been suggested that X86 DOS Comparison be merged into this article or section. ... OS/2 was an operating system created by Microsoft and IBM and later developed by IBM exclusively. ... Windows redirects here. ... OS/400 is an operating system used on IBMs line of AS/400 (now called iSeries) minicomputers. ... AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a proprietary operating system developed by IBM based on UNIX System V. Before the product was ever marketed, the acronym AIX originally stood for Advanced IBM Unix. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... The ARM architecture (originally the Acorn RISC Machine) is a 32-bit RISC processor architecture that is widely used in a number of applications. ... x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ... palmOne Tungsten T5 Personal digital assistants (also called PDAs) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. ... A computer workstation, often colloquially referred to as workstation, is a high-end general-purpose microcomputer designed to be used by one person at a time and which offers higher performance than normally found in a personal computer, especially with respect to graphics, processing power and the ability to carry...

IBM saw Workplace as a way to move their existing customer base onto a PowerPC-based solution. At the time they offered PCs based on the x86/OS/2 and servers on PowerPC/AIX. There was also a lot of talk about PDAs. By moving to a Mach-based system, their operating systems could be easily ported across these systems, targeting the PowerPC Reference Platform (PREP) on the desktop and servers, and ARM on PDAs. Customers could use their existing hardware with the new OS, replacing it with PPC-based machines with little headache. PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP) was a PowerPC hardware reference design. ...

The inherent difficulty of implementing a kernel with multiple personalities, and poor communication between the teams implementing the different personalities, are largely blamed for the failure and the two billion dollar cost. Throughout the project, poor performance was accepted on the belief that the high speed of PowerPC hardware would make it a non-issue. This turned out to be a false belief. Eventually, the PowerPC kernel with the OS/2 personality, and a new UNIX personality, was released as a commercial product in October 1995. In 1996, a second version was released that also supported x86 and ARM processors. Faced with poor performance; low acceptance of the PowerPC Reference Platform (on which the initial offering ran); poor quality of the PowerPC 620 platform; extensive cost overruns; lack of AIX, Windows, or OS/400 kernel personalities; and resulting low customer demand, the project was cancelled.

Upon cancellation, IBM closed both the Workplace OS project and the Power Personal Division responsible for low end PowerPC processors. The other long term effect was that IBM decided to stop developing new operating systems, and committed heavily to using Windows and Linux. Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ...