88Open, the group of hardware and software vendors committed to the Motorola 88000 RISC chip, has issued a binary compatibility standard for the new processor. The standard calls for all software written for the 88000 to employ a common interface to executable or binary programs, so that all software will be easily transportable between different hardware implementations based on the 88000. By not specifying an operating system, the standard, implemented at a basic system call level, is potentially applicable to any variant of Unix, or to a non Unix operating system. 88Open’s binary standard committee, headed by Data General’s senior technical consultant Donald Lewine, used the proposed Motorola 68000 family standard document produced by Motorola and Unisoft Corp as a model, and the 88000 standard is similarly compatible with Posix, X/Open and the AT&T System V Interface Definition. According to Lewine, the standard incorporates 90% of the specifications developed for the proposed 68000 standard, which should ease the portability of applica.cw 8 tions between the two architectures. The 88000 Binary Compatibility Standard is also said to be a subset of AT&T’s proposed application binary interface for the chip, which will add extensions such as shared library support, network interface, and the look and feel of the windowing system, using Open Look. 88Open says it will be working with AT&T to extend the binary standard to full Applications Binary Interface standard in the future.
