From: lebeld@JSP.UMontreal.CA (Lebel David)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: more A4000 & AA info from BiX
Keywords: BIX, AA, A4000, WOCA, SuperAA
Date: 14 Sep 92 20:01:55 GMT
Organization: Universite de Montreal


  This message was posted on BIX by J. Dow (one of BIX Amiga section's SysOps),
and cross-posted here by me w/o permissions. Well, I don't think it will
hurt anyone and credits is given to Miss Dow.

   It talks about a conference given at WOCA, and describe the future of the
Amiga computer series.

   Enjoy,

---cut---
TITLE: Lewis Eggebrecht's Address to the Convention.
Alas, they changed the time on it. I was told 2:30PM yesterday. But it started
1:15PM. I walked in about 20 minutes into the talk so I missed some of the
goodies up front including an organization chart etc. (Maybe John W could post
that puppy. It'd be interesting even if as is typical of such beasties it is
obsolete by the time we see it here. Such is the Tao of org charts.)

As I arrived he was talking about how AA was the future for the low end
Amigas for some time to come. He described some of the AA features etc. Then
he wandered into the goodies. To mix metaphores a tad he spilled an awful
lot of beans in his talk.

For some backgrounder material original chipset was some modest number of
transistors equivalent, in the 60k range I believe he cited. ECS was somewhat
more with AA coming in just under 100k. Super AA, to give it a name here, is
expected to come in at 750k transistor equivalent in sub-micron CMOS. While
AA does not address audio Super AA does. It also addresses CDROM issues and
a host of other key multimedia requirements. It allows audio sampling and
replay at rates up to 100k/sec at 16bits per second, I think I heard. (I will
admit I was a skosh boggled.) It is capable of up to 8 voices. The chip clock
speed of AA is in the 28MHz-57MHz range. (The A4000 is a 57MHz machine.) The
Super-AA doubles this again. AA is 32 bits, double original. Super AA is double
that again, 64 bits. Instead of slower DRAM requiring lossy refresh cycles and
all that stuff it will use VRAM for speeds. Overall performance is expected
to extend to between 12 and 20 times present (AA or ECS - I dunno) technology.
It will do up to 1kx1k screens with bitplanes or chunky pixels. It has an
enhanced blitter. It has a 24 bit true color mode. (That mode skips the palette
lookups.)

And then we move into some of the candy. (You thought the above was great?
Bunky, I have news for you!) The SuperAA chipset will also feature on chip
image decompression. (I do not remember him mentioning JPEG so it may be a
different format of compression.) It will allow 72Hz refresh rate in all or
most modes and up to 100Hz in some modes. It uses an independant asynchronous
clock to get much of its performance. And it will be as processor independant
as they can make it. (He mentioned afterwards that they are examining every
RISC chip out there for possible future directions for the Amiga platforms.)
Of course this wonderpuppy will have lots of new video modes and will support
at least up to 3.5Meg floppies.

Of course backwards compatability is a very difficult goal for all this. But
it is, we are assured, a concept very seriously considered in the design and
testing of this four chip set.

   Mr. Eggebrecht indicates that the AA will, for some time to come, become
standard across production for all Amigas. (I get the impression that SuperAA
will be a couple years or more off into the future.) He indicates he is trying
to facilitate shortening the development times for new products and
enhancements.) The line will be modular for easy upgrade and repair.  But it
will not be easily DKBable because all parts will be surface mount soldered
down.  Sockets add stray circuit elements which force the computing machinery to
run slower.

Then to add new computational abilities to the Amiga a DSP capability will be
added to the Amigas. To facilitate multimedia IO requirements a new SCSI-2
Zorro-III card is in development for the first part of next year. (THAT is
more believable than Christmas I thought I heard Jim Dionne mention.) They
intend to move CDTV capabilities to ALL Amigas. And full motion video is a
serious design target for them.

A lot of you will be happy to hear Mr. Eggebrecht's statement that CDTV is
also included in the cost reduction and enhancement programs. This indicates
to me that the CDTV is far from dead. (MPC Multimedia is slow; but, the Amiga
costs less.) Multimedia is the Amiga spreadsheet or desktop publishing killer
feature. The Amiga defines multimedia by its very existance. Commodore plans
to see that multimedia is spread across the entire platform series.

For new VLSI development, as mentioned above, we will be seeing an accelerated
design cycle. He intends for the Amiga to be first out of the block with new
technologies or speeds rather than falling behind on things like the 040.

Software issues include compatability, stability, flexibility, localization,
retargetability, performance, and multimedia extensions. Now for most readers
here localization may be no big deal. But for many of us seeing the Amiga run
in their own language will be a very heartwarming thing. Retargetability means
that in the future Workbench, for example, will not be so married to the
specific Amiga hardware as it is now.

Release 2.0 is the new base for software development. It represents a major
rewrite from 1.x. It represents a major stability improvement. On the whole
it is darn nice. Release 2.1 adds newer graphics capabilities supported from
Workbench, localization, and CrossDOS. The 3.0 release is intended to be the
same, for the most part, as 2.1 with added support for the new Amiga chips in
the AA series. Release 3.1 is intended to support networking and a DSP chip.
And finally release 4.0 is intended to expand on 3.1 to give us retargetability
(machine independance) and "full Postscript Support." (Whatever that is...)

One final note. Look for Todd Rundgren's new video "Theology". It should be
released to the likes of MTV "RSN." Then in February (almost a birthday
present for me) Babylon 5 will premier. It may also become known as the
ultimate set of Toaster demos. Footage played for us at the Los Angeles
Video Toaster Users Group was awesome.
{@_@}
   Now - I am exhausted and plan to get intimate with my bed. {@_-}

   Hm, by the way Lou indicated there are no immediate intentions to cease
   A2000 production. That should quell at least one rumor I have heard.
---cut---


-- 
                   David Lebel  | " Let me hear you make decisions
       lebeld@jsp.umontreal.ca  |   Without your television
 mirkwood.cam.org!ariane!david  |   Let me hear you speaking just for me "
     (514) 343-6532 ext. 44644  |       - Martin Gore, Depeche Mode