Editing IBM AIX (section)

===POWER ISA/PowerPC/Power ISA-based systems===
[[File:IBM RS6000 AIX Servers IBM.COM 1998 (1).jpeg|thumb|AIX [[RS/6000]] [[network server|servers]] running ''IBM.com'' in early 1998]]
[[File:IBM RS6000 AIX Servers IBM.COM 1998 (2).jpeg|thumb|AIX [[RS/6000]] [[network server|servers]] running ''IBM.com'' in early 1998]]

The release of AIX version 3 (sometimes called '''AIX/6000''') coincided with the announcement of the first [[POWER1]]-based IBM [[IBM RS/6000|RS/6000]] models in 1990.

AIX v3 innovated in several ways on the software side. It was the first operating system to introduce the idea of a [[journaling file system]], [[JFS (file system)|JFS]], which allowed for fast boot times by avoiding the need to ensure the consistency of the file systems on disks (see [[fsck]]) on every reboot. Another innovation was [[shared library|shared libraries]] which avoid the need for static linking from an application to the libraries it used. The resulting smaller binaries used less of the hardware RAM to run, and used less disk space to install. Besides improving performance, it was a boon to developers: executable binaries could be in the tens of [[kilobyte]]s instead of a megabyte for an executable statically linked to the [[C standard library|C library]]. AIX v3 also scrapped the microkernel of AIX v2, a contentious move that resulted in v3 containing no [[PL.8]] code and being somewhat more "pure" than v2.

Other notable subsystems included:

* [[IRIS GL]], a 3D rendering library, the progenitor of [[OpenGL]]. IRIS GL was licensed by IBM from [[Silicon Graphics|SGI]] in 1987, then still a fairly small company, which had sold only a few thousand machines at the time. SGI also provided the low-end graphics card for the RS/6000, capable of drawing 20,000 [[Gouraud shading|gouraud-shaded]] triangles per second. The high-end graphics card was designed by IBM, a follow-on to the mainframe-attached [[IBM 5080]], capable of rendering 990,000 vectors per second.
* [[PHIGS]], another [[3D rendering API]], popular in automotive CAD/CAM circles, and at the core of [[CATIA]].
* Full implementation of version 11 of the [[X Window System]], together with [[Motif (software)|Motif]] as the recommended widget toolkit and window manager.
* Network file systems: [[Network File System|NFS]] from [[Sun Microsystems|Sun]]; AFS, the [[Andrew File System]]; and DFS, the [[DCE Distributed File System|Distributed File System]].
* NCS, the [[Network Computing System]], licensed from [[Apollo Computer]] (later acquired by [[Hewlett-Packard|HP]]).
* [[Display PostScript|DPS]] on-screen display system. This was notable as a "plan B" in case the X11+Motif combination failed in the marketplace. However, it was highly proprietary, supported only by Sun, [[NeXT]], and IBM. This cemented its failure in the marketplace in the face of the [[Open system (computing)|open system]]s challenge of X11+Motif and its lack of 3D capability.

In addition, AIX applications can run in the [[IBM i#PASE|PASE]] subsystem under [[IBM i]].