Individual Computers at CeBit, Clone-A presentation on march 31st

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Individual Computers is present at the world's biggest computer fair CeBit twice this year: Viprinet GmbH shows the Multichannel VPN Router. Individual Computers was significantly involved in the development of the router, which lets you bundle up to six physical broadband lines into a single virtual dedicated line. This increases bandwidth, but also increases reliability of your internet connection up to 99.99% annual mean availability - better and cheaper than any regular dedicated line could offer. Viprinet has booth number E48 in hall 14.

We're especially happy to support the new company Commodore with rare units from our retro-computer collection. This includes a PET2001 which is 30 years old this year. Commodore International is at booth number B34 in hall 19.

Our project "Clone-A" will be demonstrated on saturday march 31st, 2007 in Aachen, Germany. We will show the prototype of our Amiga-chipset clone at Schloss Rahe Business Center from 12:00 to 4:00pm. Clone-A will ultimately be put into a single low-cost chip, which can be used in a laptop or desktop computer, but also in smaller mobile units and toys. The chip contains the processor, accelerated graphics and sound. To operate the chip, only a small amount of memory is needed. There's a huge number of free and commercial programs and about 5000 games for the Amiga platform. The games can compete with today's consoles in multimedia presentation and gaming fun.
After a demonstration that we have prepared (about 30 minutes), visitors will have the chance to put Clone-A to the test: We're inviting visitors to bring especially critical software, which will demonstrate the compatibility of Clone-A to a real Amiga. Should you bring a program (floppy disk) that works better on an Amiga 500 with 1MB of chipmem and a 68000 processor at 7MHz, we will honour your efforts with a voucher for 100,- EUR for products out of our portfolio.

There is no entrance fee for Schloss Rahe Business Center, and there's free parking for visitors.

CeBit
Viprinet GmbH

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Colin:
I can't give any release dates yet, but we're facing a 12-month period of semiconductor development. The contractor that I'm currently talking to has a new 0.35um process in the making that will be up and running in 2008 - since semiconductor development cannot begin before the design has been finalized, we're way more than one year away from the so-called "tape rollout" (semiconductors in our hands).

As I mentioned earlier on another news site, we'll make FPGA-based boards that will be sold to customers just like normal mainboards. These FPGA-based boards can be updated easily, so whenever we're fixing a bug or whenever we're adding an AGA feature, you will be able to check that immediately after downloading and installing the update.

And yes, I'm planning to sell chips to whoever wants to make his own appliance with it. Plan for a single-supply 3.3V device in 144-pin TQFP package and reserve some space on it's side for a 54-pin SD-Ram chip and a serial flash. Quantities above 250.000 units can be shipped as KGD (known-good-die) to lower the cost even more. The chip has RGB- S-Video and FBAS output (software-selectabe, including scandoubler) and needs two crystals if you're planning a multi-norm device (PAL and NTSC). For one norm, you will only need one crystal.

ciao,
Jens

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Clone-A does not mean "chip replacements". It means "intellectual property" - chip replacements would be way too expensive, as the 5V-tolerant FPGAs are getting rare and more and more expensive. A replacement chipset would be in the "several hundred EUR" area, whereas I'm aiming much lower for a mini-ITX motherboard that carries an up-to-date FPGA and up-to-date memory.

There comes a time when the old machines are to be switched off forever and put into cabinets. Clone-A will be a more-than-worthy successor to classic Amiga machines with the added bonus of modern connectivity, less power consumption and software-switchable hardware-configuration. Clone-A will be able to replace an A500 with 1M chipmem, but also an A4000 with AGA, more chipmem and added features. The concept of expandability stays the same, it's just that it's smaller, cheaper and more reliable than the aging machines that we're all still using.

Jens Schönfeld