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TheAAA chipset (Advanced Amiga Architecture) was intended to be the next-generationAmigamultimedia system designed byCommodore International. Initially begun as a secret project, the first design discussions were started in 1988, and after many revisions and redesigns the first silicon versions were fabricated in 1992–1993. The project was stymied in 1993 based on a lack of funds for chip revisions.
At the same time AAA started first silicon testing, the next generation Commodore chipset project was in progress. While AAA was a reinvention and huge upgrade of the Amiga architecture, projectHombre was essentially a clean slate. It took what was learned from Amiga and went in new directions, which included an on-chip CPU with a custom 3D instruction set, 16-bit and 24-bit chunky pixel display, and up to four 16-bit playfields running simultaneously. Hombre also embraced thePCI bus, which was seen as the future for main board interconnect and expansion going forward.
AAA was slated to include numerous technologies.
The initialchipset run has a number of early chip problems. The LUT was scrambled, so while it was possible to put up images on the screen in test systems, it was necessary to run a bit-skiggling[clarification needed] filter that re-arranged the color to work with the existing hardware. There was a bug in the Andrea memory controller that required a FIBed die locked into either DRAM or VRAM mode. There was a bug in the Andrea bus control logic that prevented Andrea's data bus from going tri-state during DMA reads from the other chips. That prevented some important bits of the functionality of the other chips from being tested.
Three prototypes called 'Nyx', meaning "night" inClassical Greek, were built as technology demonstrators and debugger boards for the new chips. However Nyx was never intended as the final production machine, AAA systems would have been based around the Acutiator architecture designed byDave Haynie. Rather, the Nyx system was a test bed for the AAA chips and some other new ideas at Commodore, including custom memory modules for Chip RAM, Kickstart ROM on a module (with support for Flash), a multiple simultaneous pixel clock system, a low cost wired, self-terminating point to point LAN,
Commodore declared bankruptcy before designs were completed; some of the focus on AAA chips moved to creating a radically different64-bit design based on a modifiedPA-RISC 7150CPU with added graphics instructions and video pipelines (SeeHombre chipset). Fully functioning AAA chips were never produced, though they were much talked about in the trade press. Numerous plans for purchasingAmiga and salvaging the technology came and went after Commodore's demise; all of them including the realization that for the Amiga to stay competitive, the development and release of AAA or Hombre would have to be one of their overriding goals.
