The AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. (then Apple Computer), IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a next-generation operating system. It was thought that the CISC processors from Intel were an evolutionary dead-end in microprocessor design, and that since RISC was the future, the next few years were a period of great opportunity.

The CPU was the PowerPC, a single-chip version of IBM's POWER1 CPU. Both IBM and Motorola would manufacture PowerPC chips for this new platform. The computer architecture base was called PReP (for PowerPC Reference Platform), and later complemented with OpenFirmware and renamed CHRP (for Common Hardware Reference Platform). IBM used PReP and CHRP for PCI version of IBM's RS/6000 platform, from existing Micro Channel architecture models, and changed only to support the new 60x bus style of the PowerPC.