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From: rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: Amiga OS *IS* state of the art, but the NeXT is better
Message-ID: <1991Apr3.114301.22324@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
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References: <zs6G8pxf1@cs.psu.edu> <1991Apr3.075121.18084@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <y39Gf6-f1@cs.psu.edu>
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Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 11:43:01 GMT
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In article <y39Gf6-f1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes:
>
>In article <1991Apr3.075121.18084@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) writes:
>	   That's why the Amiga has the best character generation
>   software and the best 3-D modeling software of anything in its
>   price range. Yes, a niche market, but that is how Apple started,
>   not so?
>
>Why is it better?  I'm not that familiar with the Amiga character
>generation software.  How is it better than Display Postscript?

  He's talking about Video Titling. For instance, Turbo Titler, BroadCast
Titler, Tv-Text/Show, not to mention the Toaster's CG. Display Postscript
can obviously display text, but can it render it real time at 60 frames
per second? The Amiga can do it better, for a cheaper price.

>	   Yes, but there were never really any good years for the
>   Amiga at that point. Now it has made its mark. Obviously the
>   Amiga won't last forever, but Commodore can be considered a sure
>   thing for the next 5-10 years, at least if stock-market analysts
>   are to be believed. They've rated Commodore a 'strong-buy' and
>   have said that it is a company to watch for in the 90s.
>
>Technology is changing too fast to say that a company is going to be a
>strong buy throughtout the next decade.  With the introduction of HP's
>Snake machines, all bets are off.  What's going to happen when
>Microsoft, Compaq, and MIPS tell IBM this is how it's going to be?

'With the introduction of the innovative revolutionary product X, we are
posed to dominate the market.' We have heard this phrase over and over before.
No doubt HP's machines will sell, but Sun, Dec, IBM and several other
companies will most likely introduce new cheap workstations.

>On another thread, how much raw CPU does it take a computer to make up
>for the advantage the Amiga has with its blitter?  Does the blitter
>effectively run at 14MHz?  Someone told me that it was only 3MHz.
>Does a 33 MHz PC have comparable graphics capabilities to an Amiga
>500?

 The blitter has an effective data rate of 14mhz. The blitter takes
2 cycles to copy data. One to fetch the source, and one to write the 
data. 14 million cycles per second / 2 cycles per operation = 7 MIPS.
That's theoretical. The blitter can do much more than just copy
data. It can perform 256 different logic operations to 3 input DMA channels.
It can also fill, draw vectors, detect zero bytes, mask and shift data.
The blitter isn't innovative anymore, but it still gets the job done.
It's the reason the Amiga has such awesome games, and why the Amiga can
multitask effectively with only a 68000. Most of the Amiga's
hardware is DMA driven, so the processor can go on to more complex
jobs rather than do the menial stuff like copying data, feeding a sound
chip or loading from the disk drive.

>-Mike


--
/~\_______________________________________________________________________/~\
|n|   rjc@albert.ai.mit.edu   Amiga, the computer for the creative mind.  |n|
|~|                                .-. .-.                                |~|
|_|________________________________| |_| |________________________________|_|
