In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of a larger alliance among these three companies. At the time, most of the personal computer industry was shipping systems based on the Intel 80386 and 80486 chips, which had a CISC architecture, and development of the Pentium processor was well underway. The PowerPC chip was one of several joint ventures involving the three, in their efforts to counter the growing Microsoft-Intel dominance of personal computing.