From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R. Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Commodore Engineer speaks out.
Date: 6 Oct 1992 11:15:32 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33
Keywords: Reverse Enginneering AGA - can it be done?

In article <1992Oct5.160442.18785@clipper.ingr.com> kontos@clipper.ingr.com (Thorne Kontos) writes:
>Now how are we to take this piece of news?
>That an even more advanced chip-set is in the works, that will orphan the
>AGA set in a year's time? But why start another rumor...

You don't seem to get it.  Once DIG is implemented, there will be no
such NEED to do what you refer to.  It wouldn't matter whether you're
using a FireCracker, the AGA chipset, or grandma's homebrew
ZorroIIIGA.  The reason he said that he and Chris Green are the only
ones that really need to know the chipset's registers, etc., is
because they're the ones that will have to rewrite graphics.library
etc. to be compatible with them.  That's the point:  If everything
goes through graphics.library, you'll always be compatible with future
chipsets, because they'll make sure of it.

>Faster - do a metal shrink to .5 microns. That should improve speed 8^).

Hell, only .5?  :)  If they take as long as they did to get AGA out,
by the time it's ready they'll have .1 micron electronics cheap.  ;D

(Readers without humor:  It's a joke.)

>Cheaper - Switch foundries (do some bargain shopping)

I've heard that they may be going to outside sources for chips...  Any
truth?  To what degree?

>Assembly - VLSI has a 95% to 99% success rate (Very little good die loss
>           there) But then again, the number of bond wires necessary for
>           the Amiga chipset falls far below some of our latest designs.
>           So you should be getting 99+% success rate at the assembly
>           level. 

Good guess.  :)

>But faster and cheaper have nothing to do with the location of the
>registers. So a new design in a year seems out of the question. What is
>more likely is an improvement to the existing design. Call it BGA to 
>follow AGA (Comments about alpha vs. beta are not welcome in this 
>discussion.)

Why not?  that's the point.  Faster and cheaper CAN have a whole lot
to do with the registers.  They can make a faster and cheaper chipset
if they don't have the AOOOGA chipset emulating the AGA chipset
emulating ECS.  :)  See?  They just make the new chip, give the specs
to the OS Graphics guys, and they add support for it in
graphics.library.  No problem.  If they have hackers hitting hardware,
then they have software instantly becoming incompatible with future
chipsets, and that means that some degree of backwards compatibility
would still be necessary.

After AGA, they can throw backwards-compatibility more or less out the
window.

>So lets talk about reverse engineering.

Lets not.

>I think I have enough high speed logic analyzers sitting around the lab
>and some spare cash in the budget to even go as far as doing a complete
>strip-back. So can the AGA chipset be reverse engineered at a 
>professional level of expertise? My answer is yes. But it is more likely
>some hacker will do it for fun (and more importantly notoriety). So let
>me see, I throw enough test patterns at the chip, and eventually all the
>registers fall out. Or I strip it back, and analyze the logic. This does
>of course destroys the chip, but it will give me the answers I want.

And anything you do with that becomes incompatible with future
chipsets, now wouldn't that be fun?  Or, you can buy the chip
specifications that C= will be giving you with AGA.  That's
GRAPHICS.LIBRARY, pal.  They're telling you:  No more hitting
hardware, as of AGA.

>Still, the idea of a whizz-bang game or demo IS WHAT PUT YOU WHERE
>YOU ARE TODAY. The mere fact that people could create all of the
>spectacular effects with an Amiga is what sold them the machine in the
>first place. Something that could not be done in the sterile 

Graphics.library isn't some incredible snail, as of 3.0, you know.
You'll be surprised, I'm quite sure.  And 3.0 IS what we're talking
about here, not current revisions of graphics.library:  3.0 g.l is the
only g.l that is compatible with AGA.  You've got to run 3.0 if you
want AGA compatibility.

>environments of the MAC and PC. If, we the customer complain, then
>you had better well listen. Your comment sounds like a gripe about
>the person who ultimately pays your check. But, if you are sick of
>hearing us complain, either give us some solutions or stop reading
>the news.

And mentioning that on the Mac graphics is slow is kind of pointless.
Everyone knows that QuickDraw's greatest problem is its speed, and
it's due to the functions it offers, not just because of the code
itself.  Even Apple knows how slow it is, that's why they're replacing
it.  I believe that the replacement will come in 7.1, QuickDraw GL,
and they've already got some software that goes aorund QuickDraw to do
what it wants:  That's how QuickTime does its stuff.

I don't know what else to say, except that the kind of thought you
offer is stifling future developments.  If C= actually followed your
train of thought, every chipset C= made would have to be near-100%
backwards compatible.  And that means that they're stuck.  With the
advent of chipsets beyond AGA, they can do what they like.  They could
offer quadratic and cubic splines in hardware for lightning-speed
PostScript and CompuGraphic fonts.  They could implement a
blitter-per-bitplane system, and all it would take is a
graphics.library, and all software using it would magically become
greased lightning.

Now, both of those are really far-fetched examples, now.  Who's to say
in 5 or 10 years whether it'll be far-fetched or not?  By giving
registers for the chipsets, they lock future chipsets into
compatibilities.

Greg
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