Quote:
Originally Posted by TEG
From the Wikipedia page you provided, the LPC bus was introduced by Intel in 1998. Commodore closed doors in 1994.
Perhaps you mean it was something already available in the industry outside Intel before that date ? An perhaps if it was not, it was due to the limitation of the technologies as a rise in frequency is needed to do the multiplexing. |
Yes but Commodore could "discover" this earlier as they created ALL HW environment by themselves - Amiga was founded around custom chipset idea so it is quite natural choice to reduce pin count in IC's (as pins cost money) or integrate whole, multiple chips design into single chip where interconnects are way cheaper. Zorro III reused same Zorro II lines to keep mechanical compatibility - but using custom silicone similar to LPC design could be introduced earlier - both, for cost reduction and for improved performance.
Going from 3.5MHz to 28MHz perhaps could be impossible but to 14MHz perfectly possible. At the beginning of 90's at least one company offered something similar to what we call today SERDES - Am7968/Am7969.
Paula communication with Agnus (DMAL) is example that Commodore was aware of this possibility - why it was not used more frequently? No clue.