Motorola 88000

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. The 88000 arrived on the market some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays releasing the second-generation MC88110, the m88k achieved very limited success outside of the MVME platform and embedded controller environments.

Though sometimes referred to as A88k, the Apollo PRISM is not related to the Motorola 88000.

History

Originally called the 78000 as a homage to their famed 68000 series, the design went through a tortured development path, including the number change, before finally emerging in April 1988. This initial version generally required a separate MMU, and saw little use. A follow-on version combining the CPU and MMU was planned. In the late 1980s several companies were actively watching the 88000 series for future use, including NeXT, Apple Computer and Apollo Computer, but all gave up by the time the 88110 was available in 1990.