The failure of personalities to generalize

Abstract

IBM's adoption of operating system personalities was one of the most publicized issues in operating systems design. The basic premise of Workplace OS work was: (1) IBM would adopt and improve the CMU Mach 3.0 microkernel for use on PDAs, the desktop and massively parallel machines, and (2) that several operating system personalities would execute on the microkernel platform concurrently. This architecture would provide users with the best worlds as they switch between applications written for different operating systems. IBM would also benefit from significant cost savings by having one common platform for all product lines. IBM's plans for use of the microkernel and multiple-personalities, as a unifying mechanism for a widely diverse set of hardware products, have failed. We examine why IBM's microkernel and multipersonality system was not successful from a technical and business standpoint. We also discuss Power Personal systems, which were introduced during these radical software changes and then later abandoned.