- Amiga Advanced Architecture chipset
The AAA chipset (Advanced Amiga Architecture) was intended to be the next-generation
Amiga multimedia system designed byCommodore International . Initially began as a secret project, the first design discussions were started in1988 , and after many revisions and redesigns the first silicon versions were fabricated in1992 -1993 . The project was all but abandoned in 1993 after it was projected that PC's were to equal the AAA shortly after release, so a further jump was needed, leading to project Hombre.AAA was slated to include numerous technologies.
* 32/64 bit data bus.
* 256 deepCLUT 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 nativeAmigaOS display.
* Direct 16 bit-planes planar pixels withoutCLUT entries,since this mode doesn't contain a palette or aCLUT it requires some kind of RTG (ReTargetable Graphics) driver like chunky modes.
* New Agnus/Alice replacement chip 'Andrea' with an updated 32-bitblitter and Copper which can handle chunky pixels.
* A line-buffer chip withdouble 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 forgenlock 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 lackingCLUT .
* 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 (avideo 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 a lower cost sustems).
* 12x to 20x memory bandwidth of Chip RAM access of ECS.
* 8xblitter speed increase of AGA/ECSblitter .
* Direct support for 4-megabyte-rawfloppy disk s (2.88 MB IBM-style-formatted and all known format including Mac floppies), with a direct interface to a rawCD-ROM drive orDigital Audio Tape (DAT) and adigital 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 milliontransistor s in its 64-bit dual-system configuration (total).
* Up to 16MB ChipRAM (graphics memory) in dual-systems.
* Two four-byte bufferedFIFO serial UARTs,one of theseUART is in the same RGA address as the original PaulaUART .
* A built-ingenlock .
* 40 on-demand DMA channels dynamically allocated by Andrea.
* 64-bit pixel bus with 114 MHz pixel clock in dual systems which makes 1280x1024 @72Hz screens possible.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 ', meaning "night" inClassical 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 byDave 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 modifiedPA-RISC 7150CPU with added graphics instructions and video pipelines (SeeHombre chipset ). Fully functioning AAA chips were never produced, though they were much talked about in the trade press. Numerous plans for purchasingAmiga and salvaging the technology came and went after Commodore's demise; all of them including the realization that for theAmiga to stay competitive, the development and release of AAA or Hombre would have to be one of their overriding goals.References
* [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]ee also
* OCS
* ECS
* AGA
*Hombre chipset
*List of home computers by video hardware External links
* [http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/nyx.html A summary on the Nyx prototypes]
* [http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/amigaaaa.html A detailed history of the AAA chips]
* [http://www.thule.no/haynie/ The Dave Haynie Archive with lots of detailed info & specs]
* [http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/acutiator.html ACUTIATOR]
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