Following the Access and the BoXeR, Index Information intend to release the InsideOut - put simply, an Amiga on a PCI card.
Placed inside a PC (or Alpha workstation, if you prefer), it will run the Amiga OS and software on a real '040 or '060 processor. AGA will be on board, but the graphics card in the host machine (along, presumably, with other resident cards) can be used by the Amiga. Drives can be used by the Amiga, and the host processor can even be used for some jobs.
The software side of this is none other than Siamese RTG - what started off transmitting Amiga data via a serial link, and then moved to SCSI, then Ethernet will soon be working across a PCI link.
Mac on an Amiga on a PCI Card?
But HiQ have realised even greater potential. We all know how well the Amiga emulates the Mac - not really an emulation at all, in some ways. With a graphics card, there's no loss in performance from chunky to planar conversions, and a PC with an InsideOut card could run Mac software at a very reasonable level of performance.
If you go to HiQ's website, you'll see them advertising what seems to be a Mac-on-a-PCI-card. At first, you might think this really is just what it says - a PCI card containing all the necessary bits for a Mac, and then supplied with a version of Siamese RTG that's been ported to the Mac. Ah yes, I can see it now. Siamese, a great product that started on the Amiga, but then gets ported to another computer system, and the Amiga version discontinued.
Wrong. This card is the Amiga PCI card, with the Amiga Siamese software, but simply emulating a Mac (most likely via Fusion).
Amiga owners (or maybe ex-Amiga owners) with a PC may be interested in this card, but the Mac version will open up a whole new market. HiQ intend to disguise the fact that the Mac version is actually using Amiga hardware to run it - Amiga devotees may not like this idea, but it does make sense. If you were company marketing a product that was supposed to be a Mac on a PCI card, would you (a) tell them it was a Mac on a PCI card, or (b) tell them it was an Amiga on a PCI card that could also run Mac software via some 'dodgy' emulation? Okay, we know that isn't the case, but Mac users aren't going to see it like that.
For a while, the idea of running Mac software on Amigas has been gaining popularity, but so far, it has only been Amiga users wishing to gain an alternative platform, rather than Mac users buying Amigas. Maybe that would change with fast, cheap, PowerPC Amigas... but it seems that it could change with the InsideOut.
Apparantely, there has been a lot of interest in the Mac 'version', so maybe soon we will soon see lots of people buying Amiga based hardware to run Mac software. HiQ liken it to a stealth bomber - selling lots of cards to Mac wannabes without them knowing about the Amiga, and then, wham! let them know that they've also got a pretty powerful Amiga system too!
Performance
And this won't be some old '020 or '030 Amiga either! Either 50MHz or 66MHz '060, using PCI graphics cards. The host processor is used for some tasks, making it (they say) up to twice as fast as a real '060 Amiga. In short, this system would be more powerful than any existing 680x0 Amiga - only a PPC Amiga with graphics card would beat it (and even then, only with PPC native software).
The price is expected to be £400, including software, but not including processor. That may seem expensive for just a PCI card, but on the other hand, quite a bargain for a high performance Amiga, if you already have a PC. There must be plenty of people with '030 (or so) Amigas, and PCs - it would be very worthwhile to sell their Amiga, buy the card with the money, and get a huge gain in performance from the Amiga side, as well as the benefit of integrating it with their PC.
From a Mac buyer's point of view, the use of an '060 would seem strange. Although, as HiQ point out, it would be significantly faster than an equivalent Mac (say, an early PowerMac), and even modern Macs are restricted to 800x600 in 15 bit, where as this card would give them 24bit in much higher resolutions, a potential Mac buyer would still ask, why not PPC? I presume that a 603e of equivalent power to an '060 would be cheaper, and plenty of Mac software is only available in PPC form these days. Even then, some 680x0 Mac software has been known to break on an '060 (real '060 Macs never existed, remember). Lastly, one wonders how on earth HiQ will get a licence from Apple, given their current opinion on cloners. If they don't, buyers will have to find their own ROM images. As for system software, 7.0 was the last that was freely distributable, so although Fusion will work with System 8, without a licence, buyers will either have to stick with System 7, or get hold of a newer version themselves somehow.
But, despite these problems, it may still be of interest to Mac users, especially given that no other Mac on a PCI Card exists. And of course, it is the Amiga side that is of primary interest to Amiga users.