The following article contains the latest information on Phase5's A\Box and further information on the PowerUp project.

TARGETING THE NEXT MILLENIUM The future of the A\BOX project In parallel to the announcement of the pre\box computer, an upcoming Amiga OS 3.1 compatible and PowerPC-based computer system, phase 5 digital products also releases an updated project status on the A\BOX development. The most important message is, that although the A\BOX project is postponed and will have to be significantly updated and revised, it is not cancelled. "First of all, we would like to thank all enthusiasts who have supported us with their positive input and their trust in the past year" says Wolf Dietrich, General Manager of phase 5 digital products. "Unfortunately, we can not honour this support with the announcement that our A\BOX system is close to shipping. During the last year, we had to spend considerably more resources into the PowerUP development than we had initially planned, and the delay in the PowerUP developments as well as the restrained development of the Amiga market in general did not allow us to follow our development roadmaps for 1997." While the company until late last year had planned to reassign most development resources to the A\BOX project after the finalization of the last PowerUP boards and their add-ons, it has now been decided to realize the pre\box computer system first. This move has been made in order to provide a stand-alone product which can expand the market and the gross sales volume, thus providing an economic base for the further developments in the A\BOX project, as well as providing a base for a growing software development and a growing user base. "We believe that there remains a strong niche for the computer system which integrates the concepts that we have outlined in the A\BOX project" states Dietrich. "It is a project which is driven by a vision that will not be outdated. The A\BOX will remain our long-term technology project, and the major contribution to the technological goals of our company. As we need to assign more resources into this development, and know that we need more time too, we will be making the A\BOX a project which is targeting the year 2000 - and we want to make it worth the expectations that many people will set in a computer which arrives at the beginning of a new millenium." Meanhwile, the pre\box project will realize a system which is more than a just stepping stone towards the A\BOX. Dietrich points out that the developments of the PowerUP products as well as the new pre\box computer system incorporate step by step technologies which will be used in the A\BOX. "Today it is clear that the A\BOX will be realized as a multi-processing system right from the beginning, a technology which will be introduced with the pre\box already. This will help to build substantial experience and know-how in MP software design on the side of the software developers, and provide a strong software base for the A\BOX when it is released." When the A\BOX comes to the market, new generations of PowerPCs with integrated VMX multimedia engines will be the entry-level standard for the A\BOX; these developments must also be considered in the design of the CAIPIRINHA custom chip which will be ready to utilize the functionality and performance of these next-generation processors. Later revisions of the pre\box systems will already incorporate such CPUs, thus providing solid experience in the implemetation of the related technologies, as well as experience in other technical areas, for the desing of the A\BOX system. phase 5 digital products will continue to evaluate the latest technologies - not only those already on the market, but also those to come - which will be considered for the A\BOX development. For the design specifications of the CAIPIRINHA custom chip this will mean that most advanced technologies, which are available when the CAIPIRINHA goes to silicon, will be incorporated into the chip design. "While we were talking about 0.35 micron technologies and 200 MHz core frequency a year ago, a 0.25 micron technology and core frequencies of 300 MHz or more are targets of today; however, we will stay updated with the development and availability of newer and faster ASIC technology" comments Wolf Dietrich. Some other developments and technologies which are under consideration and evaluation for the revised A\BOX design specifications include (but are not limited to): Wider date busses for the processors and possibly also the main memory Higher clock speed on the data busses towards the memory and the processors Usage of new memory technologies such as DDR-SDRAM, ESDRAM, SLDRAM or alternatively RAMBUS and other technologies Licensing of next-generation DSP and/or 3D cores for complementary integration into the custom design In a process of continuous and extensive evaluation of the most advanced technologies and design options it shall be guaranteed in the future that within the A\BOX project a computer system will be realized, which will provide stunning conceptual and technological innovation even under the aspect of the fast progressing technologies of the computer industry.

PHASE 5 DIGITAL PRODUCTS OUTLINES THE STRATEGY FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE POWERUP SYSTEM SOFTWARE New server task concept will be introduced with PowerPC-based CyberGL and Display Postscript Server Tasks With the announcement of the pre\box computer system project , phase 5 digital products has also specified some plans on the further enhancements and development of the PowerUP System Software, which will be the major software component for the complementary usage of AMIGA OS 3.1 on the pre\box systems. These upcoming features further consolidate the position of phase 5 digital products as the leader in PowerPC technology and innovation for the Amiga computer system. Currently available for download is a new version of the PowerUP System Software, which provides enhanced performance and improved multitasking behaviour, as well as several other improvements. This new software release version can be downloaded from the PPC-directory in phase 5's ftp- site. The PowerUP System Software and it's multi-processing features will be undergoing constant improvement and optimization, with a strong focus on the multiprocessing functionality which will be transparently utilized on the pre\box systems. It is taken care that developers who make use of the advanced mechanisms of the PowerUP System Software, such as the flexible multithreading and multiprocessing capable message system, and follow the guidelines for development which are recommended by phase 5 digital products, will have MP-ready applications right away when the pre\box systems will be released to the public later this year. As an extension to the low-level functionality of the PowerUp System Software, phase 5 will also introduce new functionality on the system-service level. Currently, the development of special server tasks has been initiated, which represent a scalable and multiprocessing-capable successor of the shared-library concept of AMIGA OS. These server tasks - which do not replace, but complement the shared libraries - can be installed in the system, and provide a fully asynchronous functionality; programs which want to use the services of a server task identify it's message port, and send a message to the server task which will execute the requested operations and reply the message of the calling program. With this concept, it is possible to provide fully hardware-independent functionality for the application programs. A 3D application, for example, can simply send a request for drawing a scene to an OpenGL server task, which then executes all necessary operations and distributes them to different CPUs or other hardware which may be available in the system. phase 5 digital products currently works on a Server Task version of the powerful and fast CyberGL library, which provides a compatible subset of the OpenGL functionality, combined with high performance and full PowerPC support (the currently released version of this library is available in form of link libraries for 68k and PowerPC, together with examples and developer documentation, from the CyberGL-directory in phase 5's ftp-site. Another project that has been initiated is the design of a Display Postscript Server Task, which will provide an important support for all software developers who need fast and high quality Postscript visualization. More server tasks will be added in the future, in order to provide hardware-independent and PowerPC-based system services. All these Server Tasks will be fully scalable, and can - of course fully transparent for the application which uses the functionality of the server tasks - work on one-Chip-603e-based entry level machines, as well as on the multi-processor based pre\box systems or even networked clusters of such machines with virtually unlimited numbers of CPUs. These new developements of phase 5 digital products will provide a significant innovation in software design. Consequently, phase 5 will propose these concepts towards Amiga Inc. as well as the ICOA to be adopted as common standards; with this move phase 5 digital products wants to further support the Amiga community and developers.