The comings and goings of the computer world in general can and do affect the future of the Amiga and this section is here to let the Amiga community at large to know a little of what is going on out there. To start this off, here's a round up of recent announcements.
Intel have finally announced the results of their co-operation with HP for their their future IA64 architecture. This design replaces a lot of complex hardware with a lot of complex software to boost the speed of the CPU. The new chip code named Merced has got so large it has been withheld until 1999 when they'll be able actually make it. It is expected to be a very fast CPU but will be first appearing in workstations and servers whilst the existing x86 (now called the IA32 architecture) will remain in PCs.
IBM have developed a 1.0 GHz (1,000 MHz!) derivative of the PowerPC series, this chip however is not quite what it seems. The 1.0 GHz chip has only a few of the PowerPC instructions and does not have any floating point instructions so in short it's probably only a prototype or technology tester, unfortunately we won't be seeing a 1.0 GHz Power-Amiga for some time yet...
This on the other hand is not a tester but a fully functional PowerPC 750 chip churning away at 500 MHz - nearly twice the speed of the current top of the line 266 MHz PPC750. The chip is based on IBM's 0.15 micron chip process and copper interconnects, a recently announced technology which allows CPUs to be up to 30% faster. Unlike the 1.0 GHz chip you can expect this sort of technology to appear in the market pretty soon.
Yet another development is a "multi threading" POWER chip. POWER is a close relative of PowerPC and is used in IBM's workstations and large computers such as the Deep Blue system which beat Gary Kasparov in a chess match earlier this year. Multi-threading is similar to multitasking but not quite the same. IBM found that they could add multi-threading to their POWER architecture and only had to expand it by 10%. With Intel's Merced approaching in 1999 other manufacturers will have to fight it off somehow and this may be one of the ways they do it. This technology could be in line to appear in future PowerPC chips.
DEC's Alpha CPUs have finally began to fall to resonable prices, very reasonable in fact. Only a couple of years ago one of the Alpha CPUs was introduced at positively frightening $3000 - per chip! Now this has all changed with the new 21164PC chip being sold in entire systems for less than $2000. Despite its reasonable cost this is no slouch, this system runs at a scorching 533 MHz and outguns even the fastest PowerPC or Intel chips - both of which are in systems which cost more.
The above system is fast but next year Samsung will be selling the next generation 21264 Alpha at an even faster 700 MHz. Current Alphas may be fast but this promises to blow even these out of the water - leaving everyone else to play catch-up yet again. DEC however are not hanging around and are working on an 800 MHz Alpha. Anyone out there remember the 7.14 MHz Amiga? Samsung have also announced they will be making low cost motherboards for the Alpha.
Intel added MMX to the Pentium and Pentium II CPUs to boost performance of video playback but there will be no 3D speedup until MMX2 arrives. However the cloners - AMD, Cyrix and Centaur are not waiting for Intel and will be adding 3D acceleration to their chips long before MMX2 appears. Initially there was fear that 3 different 3D standards would split the market but Microsoft will not support all the standards so the 3 cloners are now speaking to one another. The cloners will also be introducing CPUs up to 400 MHz and will be including large 256K caches to improve performance and cut costs.
Next year Intel will be shifting their Pentium II CPUs up a gear to 450 MHz. However, Intel are also splitting their CPUs into different ranges with Slot 1 and Slot 2 based CPUs priced for different markets. The 450 MHz CPU will be going into the workstation and server market (Slot 2) so don't hold your breath for cheap ones quite yet.
With recent gluts in the memory market prices of memory have fallen and are in fact still falling. This is expected to continue as the manufacturers switch to 64 MBit memory chips, 64 MBit is 8 megabytes per chip, expect PCs with 64 MByte Dimms/Simms to become standard fairly quickly. Quite what an Amiga would do with all that memory I don't know!
Gateway 2000 were one of the first manufactures to announce a sub $2000 Pentium II based PC. Intel under pressure from the cloners and possibly sluggish sales have been cutting prices rapidly recently and more cuts are expected soon.
While top end PCs have fallen in price the low end is also falling with companies like IBM and DEC announcing business PCs for $900. The hottest competition is in this area with the cloners all having low cost CPUs. DEC is using AMD chips while IBM are using Cyrix-designed 6x86MX processors.
Applications on Java have been talked about for a long time but Lotus have actually gone ahead and released a suite of business applications for Java. Java bytecode has the distinct advantage of not requiring a fixed operating system or CPU to run so it can run on a variety of different platforms, including the Amiga.
IBM have released a NetPC based on a 200 MHz PowerPc 603e for running Java based apps. This system needs neither Intel chips or Windows to run applications and is seen by some to be the future of computing. With other manufacturers introducing both software and hardware these sorts of systems provide the biggest threat yet to the PC market domination of Microsoft and Intel.
Apple have released new "G3" systems based on the PowerPC 750 CPUs. The new Macs start surprisingly cheap at below $2000 and range from 233 MHz to 266 MHz based systems. A number of Mac cloners were going to produce similar systems until Apple pulled the plug on the cloners. Apple recently had problems with a 350 MHz Mac - they didn't have any problems selling them but they just couldn't make enough of them and eventually had to withdraw it from sale.
MacOS v8.1 is due early next year with a number of enhancements to boost the performance of the system. The next generation Rhapsody OS for the Mac based on technology from Next will be introduced in the middle of next year. Rhapsody introduces memory protection and even multitasking, versions have recently been shipped to developers. In a surprise move for Apple, Rhapsody will also be appearing on PC systems.
Some companies are already considering abandoning CD-ROM's in favor of the higher capacity DVD ROM drives next year. DVDs have a capacity of 4.3 GByte instead of CD-ROM's 650 MBytes. They can also be expanded to two layers per side with both sides used, allowing up to 18 GBytes. Unlike CD-ROMs, DVDs have the capacity to hold full length MPEG-2 movies.
And finally a question - Who's the biggest - Microsoft or IBM?
Microsoft may have the highest profile but IBM are in fact bigger. Microsoft have a turnover of $10 Billion whereas IBM's software division alone have a turnover of $13 Billion and IBM have a total turnover of a slightly higher $75 Billion.