Amiga Product/Technology Brief

The vision and mission of Amiga is to make computers and the Interneta natural part of everyday life, by creating an industry-standard operatingenvironment for current and future consumer computing devices that enablesa wide range of innovative Internet services. We use the term "operatingenvironment"purposely, as this software infrastructure extends the traditional operatingsystem to provide a host environment for a new class of portable applications– applications that exist in a pervasive networked computing environment,and provide transparent access to Internet content and services. In essence,we are defining a new distributed home computing environment that enablesa user experience that is much more accessible than today's personal computerexperience. This environment will tie together personal computers, informationappliances, set-top boxes, next-generation multimedia convergence computersand game machines, and a host of other computing devices to define thenext phase in the evolution (revolution!) of computing.

The products under development at Amiga include:

• Amiga Operating Environment (Amiga OE) - a distributed softwarearchitecture that extends traditional operating systems to provide a richuser experience, support for pervasive networking, and a framework forportable applications that transparently access Internet content and services.A subset of the Amiga OE – the Amiga Information Appliance Environment– is portable to a wide range of computing devices and information appliances.
• Amiga Multimedia Convergence Computer (Amiga MCC) - a hardware/softwareplatform specifically designed to meld outstanding multimedia performance,a new level of ease of use, transparent access to the Internet and, throughhome networking, access to a growing family of Amiga-compatible devicesaround the home. The Amiga MCC will be distributed in two formats: an integratedmultimedia convergence computer, and a standard ATX motherboard. Both includethe Amiga OE, an underlying OS, and support for digital video/DVD, 3D graphics,surround sound, and emerging broadband and home networking standards. TheAmiga MCC is intended to serve as both a great platform for multimediaapplications such as 3D gaming and digital video integration, and as thehub for a next-generation distributed home computing environment.

Amiga's long-term business success calls for a combination of technologyinnovation,and technology integration. We are integrating underlying technologycomponents such as next-generation CPU's, micro-kernel operating systems,graphics and GUI libraries and frameworks, graphics/video/communicationschipsets, wired and wireless home networking subsystems, and object-baseddevelopment environments, in order to focus our resources on technologiesthat add unique value to the Amiga Operating Environment. These value-addedtechnologies include: user interaction paradigms that are far simpler,and much more intelligent, than today's personal computer paradigms; a"virtual appliance" model that allows software applications to easily migrateto multiple hardware configurations; support for pervasive and transparentnetworking and Internet connectivity; and the underlying AmigaObject architecturethat implements and exposes all of the above.

This short technology brief is intended to provide a very high-leveloverview of the development direction and technology choices being madeby Amiga, and will be supported by more in-depth whitepapers and productdocumentation as the new Amiga products are introduced in the marketplace.In this document, we overview:

• AmigaObjects and the Amiga Operating Environment
• Amiga MCC Operating System
• Graphics, Multimedia and GUI Frameworks
• Pervasive Networking
• Software Block Diagram
• Amiga MCC Hardware Architecture
• Development Tools and Applications

AmigaObjects™ are the foundation on which all Amiga OperatingEnvironment services are built. AmigaObjects provide powerful componentbuilding blocks that allow developers to rapidly create impressive andpowerful Amiga applications. AmigaObjects furthermore enable integrationof a wide variety of different technologies under one umbrella. Networkingis intrinsic to AmigaObjects, which means that AmigaObjects are free tomove around on the network or use network resources. The AmigaObject architectureby virtue of this flexibility enables a new class of "net-aware" applicationswhere there is no clear boundary between a device and the network.

We have chosen Java (™ Sun Microsystems) as our primary programminglanguage for portable applications based on AmigaObjects (of course, Cand C++ will also be supported for native MCC applications). WithJava technologies such as kJava, pJava, Java2 and Java Enterprise Edition,AmigaObject technology can be embedded in devices as small as hand-heldcomputers and scale all the way to large servers. This is a truly revolutionaryapproach to computing; an approach we believe will change the face of computing.

The AmigaObject technology serves as the foundation for all objectsin the Amiga Operating Environment. The power and flexibility of the AmigaObjectnaturally extends to all other objects in the environment, thereby givingall objects in the system network transparency and the ability to proliferateacross the network.

As mentioned above, AmigaObjects also integrate other technologies intoour framework. In particular, we make extensive use of as 3rd party technologieswhere appropriate. Examples include Java, Jini, OpenGL and several audioand video codec's. This enables Amiga to focus its engineering effortson the AmigaObjects and the Operating Environment and less on creatingtechnologies that already exist.
 
 

One of our convictions is that modern operating systems are just onecomponent of the new age in computing. The value proposition is no longerjust the traditional OS, but an overall environment providing intelligentpower and transparent services for the end user. While the informationappliance portion of the Amiga Operating Environment is portable, and willbe ported to a number of operating systems by Amiga and Amiga's OEM partnersover time, we needed to make an OS foundation decision for the Amiga MCC.

There are a number of very interesting OS choices in the marketplace,and it is fair to say that we have evaluated them all over the past year.From traditional RTOS vendors such as Wind River and QNX, to BeOS fromBe Systems, to Sun's JavaOS built on Chorus, to Linux. As has been previouslyannounced, we had been working for some months with QNX Software Systemsto try to adapt the QNX RTOS to the needs of a next-generation multimediaconvergence computer. At the same time, we had also been working with keymembers of the Linux community to evaluate the pros and cons of Linux.As we focused on building a successful business proposition, it becameapparent to us that more and more of our technology partners and softwarevendors were encouraging us to focus on Linux as our underlyingOS kernel. While we were impressed with some of the technology elementsin QNX (and BeOS and Chorus, for that matter), we felt that it will bedifficult for a proprietary operating system to attract the broad industrysupport required to be successful over the coming years.

Linux has been picking up substantial momentum over the past year asa viable, open alternative to Windows in the marketplace. Over the pastyear, Linux usage has more than tripled, with both large vendors and start-upsadopting Linux as their OS foundation. The growing commitment to Linuxapplications from a wide variety of software vendors, and the growing developmentand availability of Linux device drivers from hardware and peripheral suppliers,make it a compelling choice. Also, as we ported our higher level operatingenvironment and AmigaObject architecture to Linux, we discovered significantperformance advantages in the Linux kernel in areas such as distributedobject invocation. And, no small advantage, Linux is probably the moststable operating system available in the market.

For all of these reasons, we have decided to build the next-generationAmiga MCC platform on top of a Linux OS foundation. We would be remissin not acknowledging that there are issues to overcome with Linux, as therewere with all of the other OS choices we evaluated. For example, therewere concerns with TCP/IP performance, which are being resolved, and concernsabout the required disk and memory footprint. As anyone knows who has lookedat Linux, the overall system is quite large. However, as we build our OSfoundation, we are subsetting Linux to meet our needs, and are now confidentthat disk and memory requirements are quite reasonable (Linux is startingto appear in a wide variety of information appliance devices, and thereis even a version of Linux that runs on the Palm Pilot!). There are alsovarious other performance issues with Linux that we are attacking – aswith the original Amiga, we are tightly binding the OS kernel to a specialized,high-performance hardware architecture that resolves many of the concernsthat we, and the Amiga community, have had with existing Linux implementations.The momentum building behind Linux, and the resources around the worldbeing applied towards fixing various issues, gives us confidence that thiswill turn out in the end to be the right choice.
 
 

The technology strategy for graphics involves developing key partnershipswith companies currently producing state-of-the-art component products.Amiga leverages the development efforts of these organizations to deliverthe product capabilities to Amiga customers. For example Amiga is workingwith ATI to incorporate next-generation 3D rendering technologyinto the MCC (see the Hardware Architecture section).

The widespread acceptance and momentum of OpenGL makes it thesolid choice as a 3D API to exploit hardware rendering capability. In addition,the latest Java 2 releases have extended capabilities for 3D scenemanipulation, advanced imaging, and overall media coordination. AmigaObjectsare being developed to give users device-independent control of these variousmedia through Java objects which in turn access graphics hardware accelerationthrough OpenGL whenever possible or appropriate. It is important to understandthat, when discussing AmigaObject or Java access to hardware-acceleratedAPI's such as OpenGL, care is being taken to ensure that the higher levelsoftware does not "get in the way” when accessing the underlying hardware.As with the original Amiga, it is the tight integration of software andhardware that provides overall system performance.

The technology strategy for multimedia is essentially analogous to thatfor graphics. The hardware delivery system for digital multimedia may bea 3D graphics engine, a DVD decoder including MPEG 2 and AC-3 digital surroundsound, or broadband Internet. For a complete solution, the underlying hardwaremust be powerful enough to both capture and play back audio/video streams.To accomplish this, Amiga is developing partnerships with the leading hardwaremanufacturers of these technologies. AmigaObjects are being developed togive developers device-independent control through Java. The Java-basedAmigaObjects invoke methods to access appropriate levels of special hardwareassistance and acceleration. In cases where there is not a widely acceptedAPI such as OpenGL, Amiga and partners are writing a number of these methodsin native code as necessary. As with 3D, a tight integration of softwareand hardware will provide outstanding support for streaming media.

The Information Appliance portion of the Amiga Operating Environmentwill be hosted on a wide range of devices, and the interactional naturesof these devices can be expected to differ widely. It would be foolishto try to design a single interface for a palm-sized device with a small,touch-sensitive, grayscale display and a relatively slow wireless networkconnection; a set-top box with remote control and TV display; and a traditional,multimedia desktop computer with full keyboard, mouse, high-resolutionmonitor, and broadband networking – it is doubtful that any single designcould meet the needs of the users of all these devices. Instead, we areimplementing a design environment that will insure a clear sense of consistencyof interaction across devices, while respecting the physical constraintsof the device on which a particular interface appears. We will also minimizethe effort to which developers must go to create virtual appliances ableto run on a wide range of products.

With regard to windowing environments on the Amiga MCC, we are leveraginga combination of technologies from Linux and Java. At the lowest level(managing the bits on the screen), we are using the latest Linux X Windowswindow system. Most users and developers will never see X Windows directly(unlike older UNIX systems, when X Windows was somewhat cumbersome). However,the use of X Windows will allow both new applications and standard Linuxapplications to run seamlessly on the MCC. Sitting above X Windows area growing number of window managers that will be available on the MCC,and Java developers will have access to the portable Java Swing GUI classesthat hide the underlying windowing complexity under a modern programmingmodel. Finally, there will be a suite of end-user workspaces, includinga new Amiga Workbench being designed at Amiga. There are alreadya number of interesting desktop environments available for Linux, and itis our intent to contribute the Amiga workbench to the open source movement,and encourage the creative Amiga and Linux communities to modify, enhance,replace, and generally get creative when it comes to next-generation desktopenvironments (we believe that one of the disadvantages of today's Windowsand Macintosh personal computers is the "closed” nature of their desktopenvironments).
 
 

The near future will bring more high-speed broadband Internet serviceto homes via cable modems, xDLS and other new technologies. The industryis standardizing on technologies for home networking, giving consumersthe ability to connect products throughout the home using standard homewiring and wireless digital high-speed options.

Amiga-enabled products will support these standards and seamlessly connectto each other while leveraging the entire home through our distributedobject technology. We are integrating emerging standards such as HomePNAby Broadcom/Epigram into the Amiga Operating Environment, usingstandard phone lines in North America homes. Several initiatives are alsobeing pursued in Europe and Asia, which we continue to monitor. We arealso investigating the front-running technologies for digital wirelessnetworks for the home environment. Most regions of the world will standardizeon a form of 2.4Ghz digital wireless networking like that of Proxim'swhich we will support as they become adopted by the industry. With thenew Amiga object technology and integration of these standards, the homewill become "the computer,” including seamless high-speed connection tothe Internet.

With AmigaObjects being the foundation for all object services and supportingdistributive processing in the Amiga Operating Environment, networkingnaturally becomes pervasive. There is no distinction between devices (e.g.hard disks) found local to a computing element or an equivalent devicefound somewhere on the network. The Jini™ technology from Sun Microsystemsaddresses many of these problems with an architecture that enables instantconnectivity of devices to the network such as disk drives, printers, scanners,cameras, etc. We are encapsulating Jini technology for the types of deviceswhere it works well, and are providing complete AmigaObject solutions forservices not supported effectively by Jini. We'll provide more detailson the pervasiveness of network services at a later time.

The actual choice of transport is unimportant to the software and applicationarchitecture. We expect to support most of the popular networking standards,such as Ethernet, modem, HomePNA, HomeRF, IEEE 1394 and other digital highspeed networking over time. The only real issue is one of bandwidth: lowerbandwidth connectivity tends to limit the quality of services that canbe offered. As you can see from the hardware section, we're actively workingon providing high-bandwidth networking in our base system, thereby enablinga new generation of net-aware applications and products.
 
 

The Amiga MCC is being designed to support state-of-the-art multimediawhile leaving the PC legacy baggage behind. The MCC will have DVD, high-performance3D, Ethernet-based home networking, digital and traditional analog videoand audio, and USB ports for digital peripherals. It will have room forat least 2 hard drives, 2 PCI slots, 7 USB ports and an open drive bayfor enthusiast options such as Zip and Jazz drives.

There is significant momentum for USB (Universal Serial Bus)in the industry. USB is a digital 2-way interface that supports up to 10Mb/s.This allows game controllers to support high-speed interactivity, includingfeatures such as force feedback so when you are driving the car the wheelwill push back on you. It allows hot detection of devices such as keyboards,printers, scanners, cameras, game controllers, storage devices, etc. Infact, the USB standard supports up to 127 peripherals on a single port.For this reason we do not intend to support the legacy serial, parallel,PS/2 or analog game ports. You can always add USB hubs for more devices,and there are converters to the old buses (e.g. USB to parallel) for yourlegacy peripherals that you might not want to get rid of for a while. Thereare even efforts under way to make the next version of USB work up to 100Mb/s.

The industrial design for the MCC has been done by Pentagram,a leading worldwide industrial design firm. Several concept sketches (outof approximately 12 that were considered) have been previously released,and the final industrial design will be shown at the upcoming World ofAmiga and AmiWest shows.

As the foundation and hub for the Amiga computing revolution, the AmigaMCC will be delivered in two formats: an integrated computing system withan attractive industrial design and separate monitor option; and a standardsize ATX format motherboard for systems vendors, software developers andenthusiasts who want access to MCC functionality in other configurationswith greater expandability.

We have selected a very exciting CPU for the MCC, which is atthe heart of a next-generation processing subsystem. The CPU subsystemwill provide more than just traditional central processing services – havingchosen Linux and Java as two of our fundamental software building blocks,we wanted a CPU subsystem that could be highly tuned for a Linux/Java softwarebase, while also running classic Amiga applications. We are still understrict confidentiality constraints, and cannot disclose information aboutthe CPU at this time. However, we believe the selection of this technologywill give us a unique advantage for the Amiga.

As mentioned earlier, the MCC will include a very high-performance 3Dgraphics subsystem, support for streaming media integration, and supportfor the emerging home networking standards that will become pervasive overthe next two years. Following is a partial list of features under developmentin the MCC hardware architecture:

Processing Subsystem:

• High-performance next generation CPU
• • Hardware assist for Linux kernel, Java VM, and classic Amiga emulation
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• 168-pin SDRAM DIMMs -- future support for DDR SDRAM
• 32MB System RAM expandable to 288MB (ATX goal to be expandable to 1GB)

• Advanced SuperScalar rendering 2D & 3D hardware accelerator (unannouncednext-generation ATI chipset - specs still under non-disclosure):
• • 24-bit true color depth / pixel supporting 640x480 to 1920x1200 resolutions
  • Texture lighting & compositing, alpha blending, vertex- & table-basedfog, video textures, reflections, shadows, spotlighting, bump mapping,LOD biasing, texture morphing, hidden surface Z-buffering, dithering, anti-aliasing,gouraud- & specular-shaded ploygons, perspective correct mip-mappingtexturing, chroma-key, bilinear & trilinear texture filtering; additionalfeatures to be announced when ATI releases next-generation chip information
• 32MB 128-bit SDRAM frame buffer

• DVD drive standard (DVD-RAM when available)
• DVD playback including
• • MPEG-2 hardware decode acceleration: motion compensation & iDCT
  • Hardware subpicture decoder with interpolating scalar & alpha compositor
• Real-time video compression including MPEG-2
• Still image capture acceleration
• Analog TV: NTSC/PAL/Secam input, digitization and TV outputs
• S-Video & composite video I/O
• Full channel TV tuner
• 44 kHz, 16-bit CD stereo audio I/O
• AC-3 Dolby Digital 5.1 channel decode
• S/PDIF Dolby Digital output
• FM radio tuner under consideration

• V.90 56Kb/s modem
• 100/10Mb/s Ethernet
• HomePNA 2.0 10Mb/s home networking
• Wireless 2.4GHz digital networking
• Broadband Internet options
• • 1.5MB/s cable modem
  • DSL modem
  • ISDN modem
  • Digital satellite decoders

• Two E-IDE UltraDMA interfaces (support for four drives)
• Support two high capacity hard drives (ATX user configurations could supportmore)

• 2 PCI slots (ATX target is 6 PCI slots)
• 3.5" open bay for Zip/Jazz/120MB floppy or other options

• Infrared for remote control devices
• Microphone input
• Display touch screen controller
• 7 Universal Serial Bus "USB” 10Mb/s digital ports (2 in front for easyaccess)
• Investigating 1394 option

We are working with several leading development tool and applicationssoftware suppliers to ensure that there are great tools and applicationsfor the Amiga OE and the Amiga MCC. One of the key reasons that we choseLinux for the underlying operating system of the MCC is the tremendousgrowth in Linux-based tools and applications, many of which will be availablefor the Amiga MCC. Similarly, our choice of Java for the Amiga OE was partlydriven by the fact that there are some very powerful Linux-based Java developmentenvironments that are either already shipping, or will be shipping overthe coming months. The Amiga MCC will instantly be one of the best-sellingLinux-based systems in the marketplace, and it is the intent of Amiga andits partners to ensure that these tools are available on the MCC.

Obviously, we are not at liberty to disclose the release plans of othercompanies. As we move closer to the Amiga OE and Amiga MCC ship dates,companies developing applications and tools for the new Amigas will announcetheir own plans to release software for the Amiga.
 
 

We believe that the Amiga Operating Environment will power a wide rangeof next-generation computing devices. The Amiga MCC as the foundation,will set the standard for multimedia convergence computers in the emerginghome computing environment.

This brief in no way documents all that is happening at Amiga. We haveseveral exciting things in development that we would like to disclose tothe community and will as our partners will allow. The decisions that arebeing made are focused on the future while keeping our eyes on today andyesterday. Hopefully this brief has given you an insight to our direction.
 

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