platform
1) In computers, a platform is an underlying computer system on which application programs can
run. On personal computers, Windows 2000 and the Mac OS X are examples of two different platforms.
On enterprise
servers or mainframes,
IBM's S/390 is an example of a platform.
A platform consists of an operating
system, the computer system's coordinating program, which in turn is built on the instruction
set for a processor
or microprocessor
,the hardware that performs logic operations and manages data movement in the computer. The
operating system must be designed to work with the particular processor's set of instructions. As
an example, Microsoft's Windows 2000 is built to work with a series of microprocessors from the
Intel Corporation that share the same or similar sets of instructions. There are usually other
implied parts in any computer platform such as a motherboard and a data bus, but these parts have
increasingly become modularized and standardized.
Historically, most application programs have had to be written to run on a particular platform.
Each platform provided a different application program interface for different system services.
Thus, a PC program would have to be written to run on the Windows 2000 platform and then again to
run on the Mac OS X
platform. Although these platform differences continue to exist and there will probably always be
proprietary differences between them, new open
or standards-conforming interfaces now allow many programs to run on different platforms or to
interoperate with different platforms through mediating or "broker" programs.
2) A platform is any base of technologies on which other technologies or processes are
built.
