#3D-RISC
6 messages in this thread
For those of you who don't subscribe to Euromags (or buy them at newsstands)
and didn't catch the David Pleasance-Colin Proudfoot interview in the Dec.
issue of CU Amiga, here's an interesting bit of info on the capabilities of the
new 3D-RISC technology that Commodore was working on to replace AGA. It will
be a real-time 3D rendering engine w/ texture mapping. Will have built-in
support for MPEG video. And will include (though it hadn't been confirmed)
16-bit 22 channel stereo audio. David Pleasance estimated that it would be
30-35 times more powerful than the A4000. And if a CD games console were
released with the technology a la CD32, it would be 20 times more powerful than
the specs given for the Nintendo Ultra 64. I will state that these were only
early estimates and they also stated that the new chipset will NOT be
backward-compatible with the previous chipsets. Just wanted to throw this out
for discussion. As for me it means that I'll probably buy an A1200 as a
stop-gap measure until I can get one of these mega-systems. Now how this
reluctance by myself and others to spend money on a high-end system that will
be obsolete in 12-18 months will effect the attempts to re-launch the Amiga I
don't know. Maybe the early announcement of the abandonment of AAA by both of
the major parties was a bad idea.
Mark,
There are a growing number of RISC based chipsets (Glint and Sony's PlayStation
chipset) that could be used in substitution of the proposed AAA+ chipset. The
PlayStation chipset is the most interesting to me. Like the proposed AAA+
chipset it has 24-bit display capability, blitter function, multiple
sprites/bobs support, texture mapping and some other nifty features that I
can't think of off the top of my head. I have seen Sony's digital AVO and DVE
modules which the PlayStation chipset is a subset of. Very, very impressive.
As I understand it, the AAA+ and RISC change over will break every current
Amiga software product available on the market today. If that's the case,
adapting the PlayStation chipset would save time and money and bring a new
Amiga to market sooner. How practical this is, I don't know. (Dale? Can you
shed some light on this issue?) Just an interesting thought.
Regards,
John Chang
Nothing about RISC or AAA will inherently break all software. Most software
that works with graphics cards today would probably have worked fine under AAA.
Dumping a RISC into an Amiga and running a full 040 emulator on it wouldn't
break much of anything, but there wouldn't be any point (an 060 would be
faster).
To get the benefits of RISC, you've got to port apps to native RISC. If you've
got to do that AND adopt to a new chipset which isn't Amiga-like, what's the
point? I mean, you might as well fix all the yucky DOS stuff we've inhereted,
add VM and protected memory, change the exec message passing scheme to suit
that (and to be networkable), etc.
At this point, there is no reason to call it an Amiga or to think that it is
any easier to port Amiga software to it than any other software. No reason
you'd need to own any of the old Commodore.
Of course, I'd be all for working on such a machine. Anyone got a billion or
two lying around unused?
"Anyone have a billion or two lying around?"
Bill Gates does. *8^)
-= Vance =- Image Master
Internet: viking@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
I'd rather see something more powerful than the PSX chipset. It's very
good, but it's nowhere close to what's in arcades now. (Of course, it's
cheaper too. 😉 For example, have you seen Daytona, Ridge Racer, or
Desert Tank? Eye-popping _high res_ graphics! The PSX version of Ridge
Racer had to be compromised in resolution (256×224 instead of over
640×480), frame rate (30fps instead of 60fps), and color (16-color
textures instead of 256- color ones).
>> As I understand it, the AAA+ and RISC change over will break every
>> current Amiga software product available on the market today.
Probably. So if they're going to kill backward compatibility, they might
as well do it right, eh? 😉
– Jim, on AP!
Jim,
The PSX chipset is a derivative of the chipsets available from their DVE and
ADO boxes. I'm sure that Sony has something shelved somewhere that can be used
or a chipset that the Sony engineers have been tinkering with. Time to start
the "skunkworks" ala Chrysler.
Regards,
John Chang