Re: 65816 emulating a C64.

> On Jul 24, 2020, at 12:25 AM, admin_at_wavestarinteractive.com admin@wavestarinteractive.com <admin@wavestarinteractive.com> wrote:
> 
> FPGA uses very advance programmable logic. If you think about it, it is a more advance form of the technology behind the PLA and similar components found in the Amiga. The level of sophistication reached a point where you can clone the electronics of these chips using programmable logic where you no longer need to produce these older chips using traditional methods done in the 70s and 80s. In fact, Commodore probably would have replaced traditionally made 65xx chips with versions made in programmable logic had Commodore not go bankrupt and were to make a C64 today. Sooner or later, they would have ran into problems with EPA at MOS Technologies foundry which would have required it to be shut down so Commodore would have had to replace that. Likely, they would have went fabless using TSMC in Taiwan or they would have had to replace the foundry which would have cost them close to a hundred million dollars. Jack's vertical integration model would not have been sustainable through the 1990s and early 2000s due to the regulatory environment. Commodore might have acquired Altera or Xillinx or Lattice for the programmable logic technology to advance one of the innovations they were one of the first computer manufacturers to employ with the PLA. One benefit would have been the ability to update and patch hardware like a firmware update. This would have been something we might have seen.

A bit off-topic, but I think this alternate history is extremely unlikely. FPGAs are expensive relative to ASICs, and this was even more true in the early 90’s. At that time, MOS was still making mixed-signal chips using an outdated foundry that was little updated from the late 70’s.

Commodore was going to go fabless, and they actually started down this path with the Hombre project which was going to be manufactured by HP who had also made the AGA Lisa chip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset

But Hombre wasn’t reprogrammable logic, which would reduce density and increase cost tremendously. Commodore didn’t care about reusing and upgrading hardware — they’d rather you buy a new system cheaply later.

There are many plausible alternate historical futures for Amiga, including set-top box, game console, industrial (electronic signs), movie editing (Avid), and multimedia cards (think nVidia + Creative Labs). But none would have been based on FPGAs.

-Nate