Jeff Frank
Amiga Technologies GmbH My name is Jeff Frank and I have been retained by Amiga Technologies GmbH to provide technical assistance with respect to Engineering and Manufacturing Amiga related products. Previously I have been with Commodore International Ltd. for nearly nine years, primarily as Director of Engineering. I am sure you are all as happy as I to hear that the "Amiga" is indeed alive and well! Initially, most of our labours will be focused on resuming production of the A4000 Tower and A1200 class products. In fact, the A4000 Tower will be much like a new product introduction, considering that Commodore only ever built 1000 units. The A4000 Tower and A1200 will feature the AmigaDOS 3.1 Operating System which was not in wide release prior to Commodore's demise. We will also pursue both tactical and strategic enhancements to the Amiga product line over the months and years to come. Tactically, our first and perhaps the most obvoius enhancement will be a 68060 processor upgrade to the A4000 Tower. We also believe that a performance upgrade to the A1200 by moving from an EC020 to an EC030 processor as well as built in support for fast ram capability is a logical step. Strategically, we are looking into creating "Encapsulated Amiga Environments" or Emulations for the IBM and Apple environments. Also, potential ports of AmigaDOS to non-Amiga platforms will be assessed. We feel that this is a way we may help the Amiga Technology to permeate other Computing Environments. We will also consider merging architectures of available RISC technologies and the Amiga technology. We also feel very strongly that the "Amiga Technology" has applications in many non-traditional computing environments, and we will vigorously pursue relationships in order to promote the Amiga Technology. The Amiga operating System "AmigaDOS" features a low overhead Kernel and efficient use of memory, which makes it well suited to Multimedia and embedded applications, such as interactive TV set-top boxes. The Amiga "AA" core chipset features low-cost genlock support, high performance graphics and animation capabilities, and direct support of broadcast quality PAL and NTSC video standards making the technology ideal for video effects, video production and interactive TV set-top boxes. We feel that the time is right to establish this technology as a potential standard in these embedded applications, particularly here in Europe where these applications are just emerging and the participants can benefit from the many mistakes made by similar vendors in North America. Strategically, we will look toward advancing the core Amiga technology where possible and practical. In closing I would like to say that we are very excited about Amiga's future.