vom NYX - Amiga-Prototyp

DAS „AAA“ - Projekt (32 & 64 BIT Chipsets!)
Das neue Chipset sollte einen kompletten Bruch zu der bisherigen Grafikarchitektur im Amiga darstellen. Die neuen Customchips waren modular geplant, d.h. man konnte zwischen einer low- und High - End version wählen. Dabei waren sie leistungsfähiger als jene, die heutzutage das Herz der „Nintendo 64“ Konsolen beherbergen - übertrafen sogar Silicon Graphics Workstations. Bis zuletzt wurde mit einem HP-Prozessor experimentiert, bei dem die neuen „AAA“ - Chips hätten integriert werden können; die neuen Modelle wären also EIN-Chip-Geräte geworden. Auch die Grafikausgabe wurde erheblich verbessert und wäre bei erscheinen des Chipsets bahnbrechend gewesen. Die neuen Chips hatten folgende Bezeichnungen und Funktionen:

Andrea - Chip: Andrea war verantwortlich für den Bus - Controller im Mittelpunkt des Chipsets. Er kontrollierte alle Chip Ram Aktivitäten, sowie die Taktung und das Timing der Videoausgabe. Er beinhaltete auch den „AAA“ - Blitter.

Linda - Chip: „Linda“ stellte einen doppelt gepufferten „Line-buffer“ dar, der es möglich machte, einzelne Pixels und den Chip - Bus mit unterschiedlichen Taktungen zu betreiben. Er hatte außerdem einige Kompressionstricks implementiert. Das 64 bit „AAA“ - System benutzte 2 „Monica“ und „Linda“ - Chips.

Mary - Chip: „Mary“ übernahm die Funktion von „Paula“ im „AAA“ - Designe. Er war verantwortlich für das Diskettenlaufwerk, das serielle I/O und den Audiobereich. Dave Haynie, einer der „AAA“ - Entwickler beschrieb „Mary“ als äußerst leistungsstark, da er Soundsamples mit bis zu 50khz und 16 Bit verarbeiten konnte.

Monica - Chip: Monica übernahm die Funktion von „Denise“ und „Lisa“ der vorangegangenen Chipsets. Er diente als Grafikkonroller und verwaltete die durch „Andrea“ und „Linda“ generierten Grafik- und Taktdaten für die Bildschirmausgabe. Zudem war er verantwortlich für die „Chunky-to-planar“ Modes. HAM, HAM8, True-Color, und den neuen 10-Bit HAM - Modus zur 24-Bit Grafikausgabe. Leider kam jedoch „AAA“ nie aus dem Prototypenstatus heraus - und auch diese verschwanden nach dem Konkurs von Commodore im Jahre 1994.

Quellen:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Amiga_Architecture 
http://www.computer-history.de/Amiga/Seiten/ProGehC.html 

Zu den Chips: von Links-oben nach rechts unten: Code:

* Linda * Monica

* Andrea * Andrea

* Mary * Andrea

AAA was slated to include numerous technologies.

• 32/64 bit data bus.
• 256 deep CLUT entries 25-bit wide each (256 indirect colors indexed through 24-bit palette with extra genlock bit like AGA has).this mode runs in the native AmigaOS display.
• Direct 16 bit-planes planar pixels without CLUT entries,since this mode doesn't contain a palette or a CLUT it requires some kind of ReTargetable Graphics (RTG) driver like chunky modes.
• New Agnus/Alice replacement chip 'Andrea' with an updated 32-bit blitter and Copper which can handle chunky pixels.
• A line-buffer chip with double buffering called 'Linda' provides higher resolution (up to 1280 x 1024). Linda also decompresses two new packed pixels (PACKLUT,PACKHY) on the fly.
• Updated version of Paula called 'Mary' with 8 voices that can be assigned either to left or right channel each channel has 16-bit resolution with up to 100 kHz sample rate, additionally it does 8-bit audio sampling input.
• Direct Chunky 16-bit pixels (15 bits for 32768 colors and 1 bit for genlock overlay), provided by custom chip 'Monica',this mode requires RTG driver.
• New 24-bit hybrid mode (with a chunky/planar properties) consisted of 3 byte-planes of 8 bit chunks each.like chunky modes it requires RTG driver for lacking CLUT.
• New 8/4/2 bit Half-Chunky Graphics Mode which indirect through CLUT like 8-bit planar modes do.(requires RTG)
• New packed (compressed) pixels (2-bit PACKLUT and 4-bit PACKHY) decompressed by Linda to 8-bit half-chunky or 24-bit Hybrid pixels respactively, used for speeding up animations.
• A reverseable pixel clock for a frame grabber (a video capture device) in chunky modes (this only work with VRAM systems).
• New Hold-and-Modify modes (HAM-8 chunky and HAM-10 for 24bit / 16.8 million colours).
• Sprites size can go up to 128 bit width with any height.
• Dual 8-bit playfields.
• VRAM Chip Memory systems with optional 32/64 bit DRAM chip memory (for lower cost systems).
• 12x to 20x memory bandwidth of Chip RAM access of ECS.
• 8x blitter speed increase of AGA/ECS blitter.
• Direct support for 4-megabyte-raw floppy disks (2.88 MB IBM-style-formatted and all known format including Mac floppies), with a direct interface to a raw CD-ROM drive or Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and a digital radio interface, managed by Mary chip (port and audio peripheral controller).
• Asynchronous design managed by Linda and Andrea makes AAA pixel clock independent of its bus clock so the chipset can work with any CPU (including any RISC processor).
• the chipset would include up to 1 million transistors in its 64-bit dual-system configuration (total).
• Up to 16MB ChipRAM (graphics memory) in dual-systems.
• Two four-byte buffered FIFO serial UARTs,one of these UART is in the same RGA address as the original Paula UART.
• A built-in genlock.
• 40 on-demand DMA channels dynamically allocated by Andrea.
• 64-bit pixel bus with 114 MHz pixel clock in dual systems which makes 1280×1024 @72Hz screens possible.
• 128-bit long memory bus bursts

The initial chipset run was largely functional, but some important pieces such as the interrupt controller didn't work, and others were never tested.
Three prototypes called 'NYX - Amiga-Prototyp', meaning „night“ in Classical Greek, were built as technology demonstrators and debugger boards for the new chips. However Nyx was never intended as the final production machine, AAA systems would have been based around the Acutiator architecture designed by Dave Haynie.
Commodore declared bankruptcy before designs were completed; some of the focus on AAA chips moved to creating a radically different 64-bit design based on a modified PA-RISC 7150 CPU with added graphics instructions and video pipelines (See Hombre chipset). Fully functioning AAA chips were never produced, though they were much talked about in the trade press. Numerous plans for purchasing Amiga and salvaging the technology came and went after Commodore's demise; all of them including the realization that for the Amiga to stay competitive, the development and release of AAA or Hombre would have to be one of their overriding goals.

• [http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/nyx/docs/AAA.pdf An overview of AAA by Dave Haynie]
• [http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/nyx/ Dave Haynie documents of AAA and Nyx prototype]