AGA successor: Document about the Advanced Amiga Architecture published
Saw this linked over on Hacker News and couldn't see it mentioned anywhere here so thought some of you guys might be interested :
https://archive.org/details/advanced...ge/n3/mode/2up "Document for the Commodore-Amiga Advanced Amiga Architecture. Dated June 18, 1992, this was the never-released whole new Amiga system architecture. This project was started in 1988, and first silicon was available in 1993. Commodore's business problems prevented subsequent progress on this system. " Apologies if this is old news. |
Evidence that "first silicon was available in 1993"?
|
Quote:
So unless someone has evidence to the contrary it seems reasonable to assume that what he says is accurate. But I'm just an ST guy who knows next to nothing about Commodore and Amiga history, so don't take my word for it. :) |
1 Attachment(s)
Oh wow this is new documentation on Triple A! Can't wait to digest, thanks for posting.
No secret we all know but they admit AA/AGA was outdated before it was released:- https://eab.abime.net/attachment.php...1&d=1682958971 |
Quote:
Dave Haynie said it many years ago in Amiga.org that AA was ready in early 1990, and Commodore slackers only released it at the end of 1992, as we all know. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
His talk about the chipsets is around the 30 minute mark. He mentions the AA chips would be coming out in 1990 at around 30:50... It's worth watching all his vids. They are great.. |
Quote:
The problem here is that his statement was made on April 16, 2023, 30 years after the fact. However in an interview he did with Kees Witteveen of Amiga.org in 2003, he said "...and of course, AAA was abandoned before it was capable of even booting AmigaOS". So if there was a 'first silicon', it apparently wasn't good enough to be used in an actual Amiga. According to his AAA overview document, it consisted of "four completely new VLSI chips, implemented in high speed CMOS". AFAIK Commodore didn't have the ability to make such chips in-house, so where did they get this 'first silicon' from? He also states "The interface to any kind of system will be implemented in some kind of “glue” chip, most likely a new gate array, though this function certainly could be implemented in a PAL and TTL based circuit, as on the AAA prototype system.". So did he have a full working chipset, or was the prototype using something else? It might seem like nitpicking, but when we have people making statements like "AA was ready in early 1990, and Commodore slackers only released it at the end of 1992", I think it's important to stick to known facts and reasonable conclusions. If the AAA chipset was advanced enough to have actual silicon produced in 1993 then IMO Commodore's engineers were not 'slacking'. Quote:
|
We talked a lot about AGA was not enough in the other disappointed thread. Apparently it was even obvious to even Amiga engineers that it was "too little, too late".
|
Does this mean AAA chipset based Amigas ship in two weeks fingers crossed?
|
Quote:
Quote:
What this means is that the window of 'slacking' is much smaller than has been suggested. Regarding AAA, I found this from Dave Haynie. Quote:
Quote:
|
Quote:
Well, he wasn't called HazeyDave for no reason... ;-) |
Quote:
|
Quote:
But perhaps we shouldn't dwell on the past too much. This document is interesting for what we might want to do in the future. Could we use it to help design a 'new' chipset with features similar to AAA? |
Quote:
|
Yeah you know what if they just said, hey rather than spending $5-$6million, we just put a slot in there, and put the bestest cheapest card in there. Like they did on the A4000. And then proved everyone who made a better card, which was everyone was more competent at it than them. And now we have UAGA and XAGA and žAGA.
|
To keep the Amiga hardware competitive for a few years more in the 90's, improvements were not needed so much with sprites, blitter, or copper, but rather with chip ram speed. The PC's display hardware before 3D cards came out wasn't often more than a graphics card that offered to open a screen with various resolutions, while the CPU filled the screen with pixels. But Amiga was stuck with an ISA-like slow bus, while PCs got PCI, which was fast enough for fast 486's and Pentiums.
|
Quote:
yea, they should probably have focused on getting the bandwidrth /speed to do 800x600 @256 colors at usable speeds by the time the A3000 was released, that would have been a good place to start. |
Quote:
First of all, you say yourself that the software is the critical part, not the hardware, so which difference does it make? Quote:
And why is that different from today? But even then, we *do* have such chipsets. They are just your average PC graphics cards - which can do a lot better than AAA ever could. |
AAA _could_ have made a difference if released in 1990.
After they missed that target they should’ve just gone with ISA and then PCI - and get access to the massive ecosystem that already existed for the PC. You could’ve kept the chipset as an integrated entry-level solution while power users could’ve purchased PC graphic chipsets. Which is what happened in the end - they just had to waste time to reimplement it in Zorro. |
All times are GMT +2. The time now is 16:04. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.