From: cpca@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Colin Adams)
Subject: Re: World of Commodore summary, 9/12, part 2 (LONG)
Keywords: new chipsets, WOC
Organization: James Cook University
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 92 13:09:52 GMT

In article <1992Sep13.001854.21763@cco.caltech.edu> andrey@cco.caltech.edu (Andre T. Yew) writes:
>	I just got back from the second day of the World of
>Commodore show in Pasadena, and today was definitely
>more impressive than yesterday.

[ stuff deleted, but a lot included for advocacy
people who didn't read it the first time so apologies
for people who have already read most of it ]

>	Eggebrecht, who worked at IBM as a hardware guy
>before coming to Commodore, presented the future
>hardware goals of Commodore first.  First off was
>the low-end chipset.  He said it would be 2 chips
>with about 100K transistors.  As a comparison, the
>ECS uses 60K transistors and the AGA uses 80K
>transistors.  It would address 32-bit DRAM and have
>a 57MHz pixel clock.  It would be very much ECS and
>AGA compatible.  Eggebrecht said that backwards
>compatibility was very important for the low-end
>stuff.  You could have a 4MB floppy drive (he said
>"four megaBIT", but I think he meant byte), and 
>the chipset would support 32-bit processors.
>The memory bandwidth would be 8x what it is now,
>and 72Hz refresh rates are possible in some modes.
>He said it would be "easy" to do 2x the blitter
>performance and a 800x600x8 bit 72 Hz modes (!).
>The low-end chip set would support 16-bit truecolor,
>meaning you could have 65536 colors at once, and
>a FIFO'ed serial port would be part of it.  The
>FIFO will clear up a lot of present serial port
>problems present now.   Gee, I wouldn't mind
>having the low-end stuff now :).

This is low-end !?!?  I think C= have been listening
to us!

>	Now, Eggebrecht continued, let's talk about the
>exciting stuff -- the high-end chipset.  The high-end
>chipset is made of 4 chips with a total of 750K to
>1M transistors.  It could use either 32-bit or 64-bit
>VRAM, giving it much increased performance.  It would
>have a reprogrammable pixel clock of 57 to 114 MHz.
>The present pixel clock is 28MHz (AGA, I assume).  Let
>me go off on a tangent here.  Apparently, Commodore's
>new philosophy on systems design is to make subsystems
>clock-asynchronous, so each part can be tuned to its
>most optimal speed.  The decoupling of the graphics
>chipset from the processor clock is one example.  Future
>processors will also have asynchronous clocks from
>the rest of the system.

Dave Haynie has mentioned this in the past as being a
future big step.  He said it would probably break quite
a lot of stuff.  Break it, break it, break it guys!

>	Anyway, going back to the new chipset, it would also
>support chunky modes, without losing its bitplane nature.
>It would support CD-ROM [...]
>It would have framegrabbing [...]
>It would have a 1Kx1K screen [...]
>It would also have 8 channels of 100KHz 16-bit sound [...]
>Supporting all this would be on-demand DMA -- I assume this means we
>aren't tied to having certain DMA channels for certain
>parts only.  It would be backwards compatible with the
>ECS and AGA, although Eggebrecht didn't stress it as much.
>The performance of this chipset is 12-20x current bandwidth.
>There will be a 32-bit blitter with 8x the performance of the
>present one.  

Absolutely awesome stuff! 

>The system is capable of having 1 blitter for
>EVERY bitplane!  

This is just like SG systems.  In fact the whole post sounded
like the SG Crimson manual I have :-)

>[...]
>The system is modular so you can upgrade to later chipsets.
>The default screen refresh is 72Hz with the system capable
>of 100Hz.  

>	Eggebrecht next went on to talk about the upcoming
>product features.  AGA will be incorporated into all
>upcoming Amiga products.  All future Amiga computers
>would be modular allowing you to add stuff like RISC
>processors (he said it again!).  Commodore realizes
>that in the past they've kind of stayed apart from
>everyone else and haven't been keeping up.  No more
>of that now -- Commodore will keep up with the industry,
>which means, Eggebrecht says, they will introduce 100MHz
>processors as soon as they are out.  Commodore "won't
>dilly-dally" anymore.  DSP support is coming.  32-bit
>SCSI-II is coming around Jan 1993, and may be incorporated
>into future motherboards.  CDTV is going to merge with
>the Amiga line.  We're going to get full-motion video
>with MPEG.  CDTV itself is going to be cost-reduced and
>enhanced.  Eggebrecht stated in no uncertain terms that
>Commodore still thinks CDTV is one of its most important
>projects.  Software is going to be upgraded to handle all
>this.

I REALLY hope management is behind all of these projects
and it isn't just engineering getting excited.  Time will
tell, but this is the best vapourware announcement I've
ever seen :-)   All we can do to help is buy an A4000,
which I will be doing if I hear good news about future
employment this week...

>	Speaking of software, Eggebrecht also mentioned the
>new OS's that are going to be coming out.  He stated that
>both compatibility and stability are their two greatest
>goals.  Retargetability is also a major goal (he had about
>5).  Specifically, release 3 has all of the 2.1 stuff
>plus AGA support and multimedia support.  3.1 has API
>network extensions.  I asked Allen Havemose about this,
>and he seemed to imply that the 2.0 TCP/IP software is
>not going to be released but instead integrated into
>the OS.  3.1 also will have file and printer sharing,
>and DSP support.  Release 4 will be retargetable and
>have full Postscript printer support.  

I wonder what they mean about postscript printer support.

>I asked Havemose
>about resource tracking, and he said, "Not in the next
>version", meaning 4.0, but he said it will be in later.
>I'm somewhat surprised at this and I hope I heard wrong.

Wouldn't 3.1 be the next release though?

Warning Early 4.0 rumour: I've heard VM is coming for
4.0.  Take it as a grain of salt at this stage.

>As to how far along these things are, Eggebrecht
>says they're close to working silicon, but would not
>give any dates at all.  

I find it hard to believe this incredible break from
the Amiga architecture is almost in working silicon
when it has taken so long for the AGA chipset (C=
probably changed the name to get back at all the 
people on the net :-) ).

>--Andre
>(who isn't making any of this up, really)

Are you sure :-)  It's harder to believe than any of the Amiga X000 
fake posts.

-- 
Colin Adams       Honours Student - James Cook University of North Queensland
  "And if I seem a little strange, well that's because I am." - The Smiths