»Developer 'Press' Release Date Valid: 23rd November CE1998 Issued By: IAT Manufacturing Subject: Impulse Multiprocessing System Here follows a developer 'press' release concerning the development of an Amiga Parallel Processing system.This information is provided primarily for developers in the Amiga community and contains information on a product which is still very much under development. Any specifications remain subject to change. This project has been underway for a number of months and is now approaching hardware completion. The Impulse Multiprocessing system is being developed jointly by IAT Manufacturing and Alternate Approach. Alternate Approach are handling the development of a custom Micro-OS which will enable transparent integration with Amiga OS® which does not currently support multiple processors. IAT Manufacturing is developing the system hardware based around Motorola's Coldfire Family of Microprocessors. Development of the Operating System component is underway.Project Aims: i) To provide a low cost alternative to other acceleration systems.ii) Provide instruction sets similar to the 68k.iii) Provide a system which can be upgraded in the future whilst maintaining any existing functionality in addition to the upgrade.Advantages of Impulse: i) MODULAR system allows low cost production & easy upgrades ii) Single Board production unit with modular interface boards for specific machines. e.g.. you install an impulse card on an A1200, when you upgrade you only need to change the interface board, not the whole system.iii) The system is ideally suited to a truly multitasking environment, the individual processors can work on different tasks; reducing the number of context switches, interrupts from expansion cards could also be serviced via external request pins.Specifications These specifications are preliminary, but are unlikely to change in the near future.The first board designs utilise the MCF5307 processors working in tandem with a 68k, all processors are autonomous (this is not a co-processor arrangement). The product makes full use of multiple buses to minimise use of the main Amiga bus (IMultibus© technology) . If this product is successful we plan to move towards V4 Coldfire® during 1999 with low cost 600MIPS solutions (and no 68k's in sight). Theoretically there is also no reason why the Impulse system could not function alongside a PPC card.Why Coldfire? We have chosen to use the ColdFire range for a number of reasons, the most obvious being the fact that it is highly compatible with 68k code. The ColdFire range has recently had frequent updates and has a development roadmap taking it well into the next millennium. Because the CF is Variable-length RISC instructions are denser and less memory is required to run the same applications also the CF does more per MIP than conventional RISC. The Fact that the ColdFire range is low cost allows us to build multiple processor systems which are more responsive than a conventional single processor setup. The MCF5307 used in our first units is typical of the ColdFire architecture with each device having on-board peripherals and memory as well as large caches. DSP functionality is also introduced by the ColdFire MAC (multiply-accumulate) unit. Planned specification includes: i) Two MCF5307 processors (70 MIPS each) + 68k processor ii) Two Fully functional FPU's iii) 8 megabit SRAM (2-clock - 12ns access time) iv) Three RS232 type serial ports v) M-bus Support (Compatibility with I2C standard) vi) Custom Expansion Bus with access to programmable chip selects & DMA controller vii) Standard DRAM controllers viii) 4 General-Purpose Timers The Future? The ColdFire range is well suited to use in a multimedia environment; this is shown by the wealth of available third party companion IC's available including Ethernet and PCI interfaces. IAT Manufacturing plans to continue development of the Impulse range to provide low cost and customisable acceleration options for the future. Impulse delivers our unique IBus© interface which provides a very low cost solution for third party peripheral products giving access to Chip selects multiple busses & 2 CF Parallel ports. The 5307's two-wire I2C interface could open up new possibilities in terms of peripheral connection. Availability The system is still under development but release in early 1999 is a realistic prospect. Distribution will be handled By Blittersoft LTD.Contact Developers should contact IAT Manufacturing project co-ordinator D.S Tarmey at if you have any further questions. We are quite busy at the present time but will endeavour to reply to your mails ASAP. This text is not intended as a formative product evaluation, its details are as accurate as possible at the time of release. This is classed as developer information. Acknowledgements All trademarks are © to their respective to their respective owners. IMultibus, PMultibus and Impulse-5307 are © to IAT Manufacturing IAT Manufacturing and the IAT MFR. logo are © to IAT Manufacturing Impulse Micro-OS is developed by Alternate Approach« (Quelle: ICOA, http://www.amiga.net)