From: boschetm%IPFWCVAX.BITNET@uwavm.u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: Amiga VR?
Date: 13 Dec 92 17:58:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec14.014958.6861
Organization: University of Washington
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu


Just to clarify some things about the Amiga.  First the chip bus is much faster
now than it used to be.  I can get a little over 30 fps on an Amiga 4000 just
using the custom chips.  The CPU is much faster but a new chipset has been
announce by Commodore that will make the old chipsets look like turtles.
Also on an Amiga programing the chip registers is not an approved way of doing
graphics due to the fact that the registers may change between different
revisions of the chipset.  The OS is the only approved way of doing graphics.
The OS has been stable since at least Release 2.0 and the current Release is
3.0 with 3.1 expected soon with built in networking.  Below is some of the
improvements that are planed for release.  They are comments made by Lewis
Eggebrecht, VP Engineering, Commodore at the World of Commodore show in Toronto.



ENGINEERING'S MISSION

The goal of Commodore Engineering is to enhance and extend the Amiga
architecture by adding new features and increasing performance.  New
procedures have been put in place enabling Commodore to design and build
new products quickly; for example, the manufacturing facility in the
Phillipines was built in only one year.  Other foundries are used to
build components designed by Commodore; for example, the new Lisa chip
was made by HP.

Much of the focus in engineering is directed to improvements to the
custom chips that make the Amiga unique.  The next generation chips are
referred to as either the low end or high end chips.



LOW END CHIP SET

The low end chips represent an incremental improvement of the AGA chips:

- 2 chips about 100 K transistors each
- synchronous design architecture, 57 mHz clock
- supports 32 bit video random access memory (VRAM)
- supports 68020, 68030, 68040 and 68060 processors
- 4 megabit/sec serial data processing
- cyclical redundancy checking (CRC) in hardware
- supports 4 megabyte floppy disks (2.88 MB formatted)
- 24 bit true colour
- chunky pixels
- 2x blitter versus current ECS or AGA
- 8x memory bandwidth of current systems
- up to 8 megabytes of CHIP RAM
- 800 x 600 x 256 colour "rock steady" screens at 72 Hz



HIGH END CHIP SET

At the increased speed of these surface-mounted chips, the buyer should
think of "system" upgrades rather than "chip" upgrades.  The high end
chips represent a complete redesign of the custom chips:

- up to 4 chips and one million transistors
- asynchronous design, modular architecture
- backward compatible except for timing dependent code
- video clock independent of the processor clock
- dual ported VRAM with 32-bit and 64-bit access
- video clock greater than 100 mHz
- 12x to 20x memory bandwidth depending on VRAM speed and VRAM bus width
- 8x performance 32-bit blitter with bit blits and word blits
- 1024 x 1280 (sic) screen resolution
- 2 K by 2 K screens supported with upgrades
- true colour
- 72 Hz displays
- includes framegrabber
- includes genlock
- high performance general purpose serial port supports CD-ROM
- on demand DMA provides 16-bit audio, more than 100 kHz rates, 8 voices
- compressed video decompressed on the fly for playback from VRAM



PRODUCT PLANS

Commodore is increasing the pace of introducing new products:

- SCSI II 32-bit bus master board, 10 MB transfers, shipping January 93
- DSP on processor board, expect by late spring, details at the Orlando
  Developers' Conference in January
- CD-ROM will be integrated across product line, A1200 and up
- work in progress to support full motion video
- A4000 Tower and A4000s with 68030 and 68EC030 processors coming


Michael Lee Boschet, Jr.
BoschetM@rvax.ipfw.indiana.edu
BoschetM@IPFWRVAX

All opinions expressed are mine and not those of my employer and university.
All quotes and other facts are reprinted without permission.
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds