167 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
167 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
ATARI JAGUAR an IBM AANIMAL
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-- By Junko Yoshida,
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"Electronic Engineering Times", July 5, 1993
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Copyright 1993 by CMP Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
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Sunnyvale, Calif -- Atari Corp. will score a new level of
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videogame performance this fall with the introduction of Jaguar, a
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64-bit RISC-based system offering realtime 3-D shaded surfaces
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with texture mapping.
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The $200 system, able to tap into the growing network of
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cable and telephone video services, will take videogames into a
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graphics realm once the province of midrange 3-D workstations. In
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yet a further departure, the system will be built by IBM Corp.
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Jaguar, billed as an interactive multimedia system, is based
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on an Atari-designed proprietary 64-bit RISC processor and its
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proprietary digital signal processors. The cartridge-based system
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features 24-bit true color graphics, shaded 3-D polygons and
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realtime texture mapping.
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Atari claims that Jaguar offers four times the processing
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power of the current 16-bit videogames form Sega and Nintendo, and
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believes it is even more powerful than the coming 32-bit ARM CPU-
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based machine from 3DO Co. "If a spaceship goes around a moon, or
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a person walking on a street turns on the next corner, every
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object, every detail in such scenes is reproduced in shaded 3-D
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images with texture. It's truly amazing stuff," said Atari
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president Sam Tramiel.
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Dense ASICs
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The system's graphics performance is compared by the company to
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that of the 3-D engines in midrange Unix workstations. And like
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those engines, Jaguar is based on advanced, very dense digital
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ASICs.
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Jaguar's core consists of two chip sets, one holding the 64-
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bit RISC processor and the other containing DSP hardware. "But the
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partitioning between the two chip sets is ambiguous," said Richard
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Miller, vice president of research and development at Atari, as
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the two share some functions. The two sets apparently pack a whole
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range of components, including controllers, video processors and
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encoders, leaving outside the core only "a very small amount of
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TTLs and DRAMs," said Miller. They were designed at an Atari
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facility in England, said Tramiel.
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The 64-bit RISC processor is capable of processing video data
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at a high rate, handling various video effects as well as full-
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motion video compression on its own, Miller claimed.
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Lots of bandwidth
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Atari would not disclose any more about the core ASICs, such as
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gate counts or data bandwidth, but Miller pointed out that Atari
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engineers had to concentrate most of their design efforts on bus
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bandwidth. "Graphics eats a lot of bus bandwidth. What's available
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today for other 64-bit processors such as PowerPC is only just
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enough for what we want to do," he said. "What we designed is
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right up on the level of expensive 64-bit processors."
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To meet its cost goals, Atari had to push ASIC technology to
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the limit. The chip sets will be manufactured by "one of the top
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four silicon vendors in the world" using the "smallest geometry"
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available, said Miller. It is believed that with Jaguar Atari has
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become one of the early customers for a major Japanese 0.5-micron
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ASIC process, but the company would not confirm this.
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Clearly, manufacturing volume is essential to the Jaguar
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plan. The company intends to introduce an add-on PC card featuring
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the company's proprietary 64-bit RISC processor, said Tramiel. "It
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could also help minimize the cost of our chip sets," he said.
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Atari is also considering licensing the chip set to other
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silicon vendors, but has not determined any details yet, said
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Tramiel.
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The future holds more integration. But before working on the
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ultimate, a system on a chip, the next step for Atari's
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engineering team is to shrink what is currently a set of rather
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large custom chips further, reducing the whole system to "one
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processor, one DRAM, one ROM and one custom chip, " said Miller.
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The company is looking at both synchronous DRAMs and Rambus DRAMs
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for future use, "but we are waiting to see some of the standards
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issues get settled first," he noted.
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Miller does have a technological wish list. "First," he said,
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"we'd love to have 0.3-micron process technology as soon as
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possible for custom ICs. Second, we'd like to see some form of
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synchronous DRAMs appear as a standard commodity DRAM, and,
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naturally, a very high bus bandwidth to produce higher video
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performance. The existing improvements for faster bus interfaces
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so far have been very disappointing for us. Lastly, I'd love to
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play the Atari Jaguar system on a 10 x 10-foot display. I'm
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waiting for a very low cost, low power, large-screen-size display,
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using probably not an active matrix but FED-type technology."
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In the long run, Jaguar is designed not just as a cartridge-
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based game machine. It will use a 32-bit expansion port to connect
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to cable and telephone networks, and a digital signal processing
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port for modem usage and connection to digital audio peripherals.
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This I/O structure reflects Time Warner's 25 percent stake in
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Atari. "In the course of our product development, we've had
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frequent discussions with Time Warner. It has set the direction
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for our machine to have cable and telephone connections," said
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Leonard Tramiel, vice president of operating systems.
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The company designed and built a 16-bit prototype home-
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entertainment machine two years ago, said Sam Tramiel, but
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scrapped the plan in favor of a grand attempt to leapfrog the 16-
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bit systems that were then coming onto the market. But when Atari
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engineers stated to look for enabling technology, "there were no
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RISC processors and no DSPs that fulfilled our requirements,
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especially at our cost," said Miller. Atari's design team even had
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to develop its own HDL simulation tools, he said.
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"People tend to forget that, unlike business users, consumers
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do have much higher expectations in video quality, speed and
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cost," Miller said. "In order to match that demand, we had to
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really push the technological envelope, driving the chip counts
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down, designing the system to be highly manufacturable and
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depending on the smallest geometry process technology."
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IBM the OEM
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Atari will also push the envelope in another way, turning its back
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on traditional East Asian manufacturing sites and calling on IBM
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to build Jaguar. IBM, working with a 30-month contract worth $500
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million, will be responsible for component sourcing, quality
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testing, console assembly, packaging and distribution, and will
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build the system at its Charlotte, N.C. facility. The motherboard
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will come from an IBM-approved manufacturer, said Herbert Watkins,
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director of application solutions manufacturing at IBM Charlotte.
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For IBM, producing the Atari Jaguar system makes it for the
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first time a major OEM for highly cost-competitive, mass consumer-
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electronics products, Watkins noted.
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"To manufacture one of the most sophisticated game machines
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in the world, we needed someone who understood a high-volume, fast
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digital machine," said Miller. "IBM was a natural choice."
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According to IBM, the prototypes of the Atari Jaguar system
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will come out in July, ramp-up models in August and mass-
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production versions in September. The system will be available
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first on a limited basis in the fall in the New York and San
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Francisco areas. A national rollout is scheduled for next year.
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-- Additional reporting by Roger Woolnough.
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Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven
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realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662
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The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK
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The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674
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Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560
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"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
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