Area: AMIGA                                           Date: 17 Dec 92  18:23:11
From: Paul Maseman (1:3603/2002)
  To: All
Subj: WOC Toronto 92

World of Commodore December '92, Toronto.  This article is a
synopsis of a recording of remarks made to dealers at the WOC show
in Toronto by Lewis Eggebrecht, VP Engineering, Commodore.  Many of
Lew's comments were similar to his September address at WOC
Pasadena; I have only included a portion of his remarks and tried to
eliminate the duplication except where required for clarity.



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 dispays
- 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 Januay
- CD-ROM will be integrated across product line, A1200 and up
- work in progree to support full motion video
- A4000 Tower and A4000s with 68030 and 68EC030 processors coming

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