Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Commodore Research and Development. Message-ID: <17192@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 7 Jan 91 20:23:23 GMT References: <1991Jan3.003449.1@ccvax.iastate.edu> <17114@cbmvax.commodore.com> <75723@unix.cis.pitt.edu> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 79 In article <75723@unix.cis.pitt.edu> sjcst2@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Scott J. Corley) writes: >In article <17114@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: >> CASE 3: THE A2410 "U-LOWELL" VIDEO BOARD: >>This board is ..... >>intended to provide be a decent UNIX workstation type display, and in fact >>is very similar to the displays on our color Apollo systems here at C=. >Dave , does this mean that we wont see SVGA resolution graphics on the >next generation of the Amiga chipset because it has to stay compatible >with the 15.75kHz scan rate of NTSC and getting SVGA resolution Have any of these standards groups finally gotten together and decided what "SVGA" really means? As for scan rates, ECS already does a VGA compatible 31kHz scan rate, so I guess in some ways, that answers your questions -- while 15kHz compatibility is important, it's not the limit. What limits the complexity of any built-in Amiga video display is, ultimately, the cost of the thing. We can always build more expensive add-ons, just like Apple, IBM, Sun, and the rest of the world does. What's built-in, though, as to be justified, in terms of unit cost and R&D costs. >I have a A3000 and I hate it when you move things on the screen and you get >a double image because of the built in FlickerFixer. Its really annoying >when reading text. On your A3000, you can elimiate that in WorkBench by going to "productivity" mode, though you'll lose some colors. On any non-interlaced display, the A3000 VDE system avoids this "digital ghosting" by simply scan doubling, rather than frame buffering. Certainly this is a good thing to build in, and obviously a more advanced system could extend "productivity" resolutions to more bitplanes. Lots of people out there want better built-in graphics. So do I. However, it's not obvious to folks who don't have to build such chips how complex an operation this is. Let's look at the PC market in comparion. They have a number of register level video standards, which in the past at least were set mainly by IBM: CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA, 8514?, and most recently, XGA. IBM was kind of secretive about VGA, so it took a few years for the several chip companies out there to clone a VGA device, which is about a 30,000 transistor device. These clones were, in general, register-level copies, since no one had the IBM schematics (I don't know if anyone actually tried to reverse engineer real IBM VGA chips, though this is done in practice through the industry). So far, at least one company has just recently done an 8514 clone, which was made more difficult due to its line-draw hardware and the fact that IBM didn't disclose the register model at all. Now XGA, which is rumored to be roughly a 100,000 transistor device, is being released. Based on the fact that IBM is telling all, apparently, about the device, in order to lure folks into adopting XGA vs. any of the existing VGA+ clone things out there as a standard, the folks who watch the chip business are estimating XGA clones in 2 to 3 years. Now lets look at the Amiga chips. Any one Amiga chip is likely to be nearly as complex as an 8514 or XGA device. While C= certainly has had all the schematics for these things all along, back in '85 when the A1000 came out, they were all hand drawn. It takes awhile to put them into CAD format, and obviously they were all hand done designs, not based on any of the automated logic generation things you use for modern chip designs. And of course, they're all in NMOS. ECS Agnus is about the largest chip you'd want to put into NMOS. Anything going at a higher speed, or adding major features, would have to go into CMOS. That implies a redesign -- this is a custom chip, not a gate array. You specific real transistors, and count on them, not simply gates as you would in designing a gate array (they let me design gate arrays, like Buster, but only real chip designers like Bob Raible design full chips). So, I just want everyone to realize that our chip guys haven't just been sitting idly by since '85, or even '88 when ECS chips started coming out. They just have had alot more work on their hands than most folks realize. > Scott Corley -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "Don't worry, 'bout a thing. 'Cause every little thing, gonna be alright" -Bob Marley