Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/SCENE/AMIGA/ph52dhayn

Text File | 1996-05-27 | 9.6 KB | 202 lines

The following was grabbed from www.cucug.org the 26/5-96 01:00
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News Release / Open answer to Dave Haynie

from Wolf Dietrich, General Manager phase 5 digital products, on May 25, 96

With interest I have read Dave's comments on the current Amiga situation. As
we and the Amiga are in a situation where a lot of major
decisions for the  future of this system are to come, I
would like to answer some of his comments to reflect our
position and partial different view of things.

First of all, there was no animosity on our part against AT - we just wanted
to get things going, and so we started the PowerUP project
in late 95 as AT wasn't giving any view or commitment. We
had been offering AT all of our  support for quite a long
time, and continued to do so in a situation where there was
no development, no resources, no vision; what Dave believes
to be an animosity was simply the great concern that things
wouldn't go into the right direction for the Amiga.
Meanwhile, all development on AT side is  cancelled, so
there is no more cooperation as there is nothing left to
cooperate in.

But let's get into some technical considerations. First of all, Dave states
that our software development is kind of a hack. Funny to hear that, as he
has not seen a single line of code, and also was not
involved in in-depth discussions about what we are doing.
To simply state the facts: For our  PowerUp program,
which's goal is to develop PPC upgrade boards for existing
Amiga systems, we have re-written Exec and Expansion in PPC
Natice Code, and two versions of 68k emulators to run the
rest of the OS out of the system ROM. This is not a kind of
a hack, but simple the first step which we could realize.
Our plan to add a PPC native version of CyberGraphX - which
has emerged as a standard today - is just a software add-on
to increase the performance of those upgraded systems where
parts of the OS have to be emulated. This way is not  very
different from, for example, having a 68040 or a 68060
library to emulate in software what is different in the
processor hardware - however, as 68k and PPC have some
significant differences, it can not simply be realized by a
library or a new setpatch, but needs a completely re-
written, but fully  function-compatible Exec.

Now getting to the comments on the hardware design. First of all, I leave it
up to the public to judge if our announced systems are
overpriced (see  http://www.phase.de/ in the news section);
also the non-standard argument is missing any fundamental.
I know from the technology meetings which AT,  Motorola and
phase5 joined in the recent months, that Dave's vision of a
new computer is a standard PPRP mainboard, with a PPC CPU and a PCI bus and
that's it; any idea of adding something specific which
would have to be developed had been rejected by him in
these discussions. But, all innovative developments  today
contain some individual parts, mostly in form of FPGAs or
ASICs; it's the only way to build something that stands out
of the mass markets. We at phase 5 definitely believe that
a new Amiga system needs some unique H/W  features as it
had in the past; just having a ported OS running on a
standard PPRP system which also runs MacOS, WindowsNT, and
so on, would be the death  of AmigaOS simple as there would
be no sufficient reason for S/W developers to continue
writing their code for Amiga OS. But even if Amiga OS would
survive for some time with some application or shareware
support, it would be the death of the Vision Amiga which
never had been just another PC (no matter if there is a PPC
or a Pentium inside).

As Dave's comments on the rapid changes of the industry are concerned: We
know these rapid changes, we live - succesfully - in this
world. Are chips more  complex to design today? Chips are
more complex, but sophisticated design  tools, powerful
design workstations, and comprehensive functionality
libraries are available today for ASIC designers. Today
it's possible to start *VERY*  complex designs on FPGA
basis and go to the more expensive silicon in certain
stages of the development. IC processes are *NOT*
exponentially more expensive than some years ago, at least
not for companies who want to do custom designs  and get
strongest support from various ASIC suppliers in the world,
among them the very big names such as Motorola. Yes, even
those big ones go together to  build new fabs for the next
millennium, but were we talking about building a  next
generation IC fab?

As a summary of this, let me say the following: It has never been easier even
for medium-sized companies to develop own, complex and
demanding custom ICs  than today. In such custom designs,
visionary ideas can be realized cheaper  than ever to
provide extremely powerful products. Yes, by choosing
*COMPLETELY* standard system (such as fully-assembled PPC
mainboards) the cost of a system may be reduced by some
bucks - but not by hundreds of Dollars. And that's what we,
as we stated, don't want to do - dropping great concepts
and features that make up a very special and powerful
system to maybe save $25.

OK, all practical bits aside, Dave came up with the question what will come
out in the end. It's as simple as this: A computer that
runs a PPC OS which is compatible with Amiga OS. Long
before this computer comes out, *LOTS* of  developers who
have already joined the PowerUp program and are supported
by us can prepare their software to make use of advanced features of this new
OS,  while other existing software will be running with the
current features in 68k emulation. As most professional
software vendors do support the PowerUp  program, PPC
native apps should be there in a considerable quantity and
quality by next year - just as, for example, many software
companies today already  support the CyberGraphX standard
which has brought an Amiga-OS compatible  24-bit engine to
all these programs and those users who have a hardware that
 can display 24 bits of color.

As a matter of fact, what we are doing is the development for a next
generation OS which is Amiga compatible. We have decided to
move on with our projects  after we had lost months of
futile discussions with AT - without those, beta developers
today would have the first PPC developer boards in their
hands. We  can't afford to waste more time. We do see the
problem that the Amiga community can't support multiple
OSs, and we are absolutely open to discuss these issues
with the owner of the OS, probably VIScorp, once they have
time for us to talk about these things. However, Dave
Haynie and the new company PIOS, which he is working for,
must also keep this in mind. It's obviously PIOS, a new
company,  that starts out of nothing (and with no
recognizable concept or development behing it) and claims
for themselves to develop and market an OS "which will be
recognized by the market as the next generation of the former AMIGA OS 3.1."
(as read in their web site). This leaves a lot of questions
open. We had  meetings with the PIOS top management
already, who requested our support and  cooperation, so I
must wonder whether Dave's comments are only given with an
intention to support PIOS' position in the market. BTW,
everybody out there may estimate if it is more realistic
that an experienced hardware manufacturer,  holding an
established market position, develops a powerful custom
ASIC based  system, or that a startup company wants to
bring the "ultimate Power Amiga" to life and reach a larger
market share than Apple Computer in four years from  now.

phase 5 is very well aware that it will be a big and demanding task to write
an Amiga-OS compatible PPC OS; however, we have a large
team of very  experienced S/W developers, and we have been
working on parts of this project for quite some time. While
I can not judge how much efforts other mentioned  companies
spent into their projects, we are sure to reach our goals
with the  strong efforts we invest into this project.

To finalize my open answer, I must strictly reject that last comment from
Dave, which we could see as an affront. We will neither
adopt an unnamed OS nor will we offer an ugly hack; but
much more important, we are not "stealing the AmigaOS", as
Dave assumes. There are lots of peope out there, and
companies  which these people work for, who have been involved closely with
Commodore or  AT in the past, and do have access to
proprietary information. We had several negotiations with
AT, but no final agreements, and we never had any access to
proprietary information or other proprietary stuff. Dave
may address his  assumptions that someone could steal the
AmigaOS into the direction of such people mentioned above,
but not into ours. Again, I strictly reject any  statement
that includes any such speculation.

I hope this statement supports readers building up their
own opinion of the current situation around the Amiga.
phase 5 digital products, to reinforce this, is committed
to the idea and vision Amiga. We'll continue with our
project and support for all Amiga developers, fans and
users. Everybody out  there please feel free to mail us
her/his comments and suggestions for the  future of the
Amiga and our project.

Wolf Dietrich
General Manager of phase 5 digital products Amiga-dedicated since the A1000


You can contact phase 5 digital products at:

http://www.phase5.de
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
Fax [phone]

or by mail to the street address:

phase 5 digital products
In der Au 26
61440 Oberursel, Germany

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