Q. What's the "Jaguar II"?
A. There's been a little confusion with this topic, since at least two
separate machines have been called a "Jaguar II." The first was to have
been an integrated Jaguar/Jaguar CD-ROM unit. That project has since been
cancelled, making the point moot.
The other Jaguar II was Atari's next video-game console. Though a final
design was never reached, initial prototypes were assembled, yielding the
following information:
* Main chipset (codename "Midsummer") developed by Motorola.
* Fully backwards compatable with the existing Jaguar. Would have been
able to play all Jaguar games and use all Jaguar peripherals.
* Uses new "Oberon" and "Puck" chips. "Oberon" was the next generation of
the Jaguar's "Tom" chip, and "Puck" (also identified as "Thesus") was
a redesigned "Jerry".
* "Oberon" was so large that it required a dedicated cooling fan, powered
by a separate power supply. It's uncertain if this inefficiency was
simply due to the unfinished nature of the chip or not.
* Processing speed "two to four times faster than the Sony PlayStation."
* Full C/C++ development package available.
The following is one set of proposed specifications for the Jaguar II:
Size: 10.5" x 12" x 3.5"
Controls: Power on/off
Display: Resolution up to 1600 x 600 pixels (50 Hz/interlace)
32-bit "Extended True Color" display with 16,777,216
colors simultaneously (additional 8 bits of supplimental
graphics data support possible)
Multiple-resolution, multiple-color depth objects
(monochrome, 2-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit) can be
used simultaneously
Ports: Cartridge slot/expansion port (64 bits)
RF video output
Video edge connector (video/audio output)
(supports NTSC and PAL; provides S-Video, Composite, RGB
outputs, accessible by optional add-on connector)
Four controller ports
Digital Signal Processor port (includes high-speed
synchronous serial input/output)
Controllers: Eight-directional joypad
Size 5" x 4.5" x 1.5", cord 7 feet
Six fire buttons (A, B, C, D, E, F)
Pause and Option buttons
12-key keypad (accepts game-specific overlays)
The Jaguar 2 has seven processors, which are contained in three chips.
Two of the chips are proprietary designs, nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry".
The third chip is a standard Motorola 68EC020 used as a coprocessor.
Tom and Jerry are built using an 0.3 micron silicon process. With
proper programming, all seven processors can run in parallel.
- "Tom"
- 1,250,000 transistors, 292 pins
- Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1)
- 64-bit RISC architecture (64/128 register processor)
- 64 registers of 128 bits wide (shadow-buffering)
- Has access to all 2 x 64 bits of the system bus
- Can read 128 bits of data in one instruction
- Rated at 127.902 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 63.951 MHz
- 2 x 32K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM (matrix)
- Performs a wide range of high-speed graphic effects
- Programmable
- Object processor (processor #2)
- 64-bit RISC architecture
- Programmable processor that can act as a variety of different video
architectures, such as a sprite engine, a pixel-mapped display, a
character-mapped system, and others.
- Blitter (processor #3)
- 64 bits read and write at the same time (multibuffering)
- 8K read buffer (fifo)
- 8K write buffer (lifo)
- Performs high-speed logical operations
- Hardware support for Z-buffering and Gouraud shading
- Texture Mapping Engine (processor #4)
- 64-bit RISC
- 64 bits
- Programmable risc processor
- 256K "texture-work" RAM of zero wait-state internal CACHE
- capable of doing about 900,000 texture-mapped polyons; without
textures, up to 2,500,000 polyons are possible.
- realtime Gouraud and Phong shading
- J/MPEG "COMBI" Chip (processor #5)
- 64 bits
- not programmable
- 8K own data rom (with sinus) table
- 128K CACHE (fifo)
- realtime J/MPEG decompression via CACHE (fifo)
- DRAM memory controller
- 4 x 64 bits
- Accesses the DRAM directly
- "Jerry"
- 900,000 transistors, 196 pins
- Digital Signal Processor (processor #6)
- 32 bits (32-bit registers)
- Rated at 53.3 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 53.3 MHz
- Same RISC core as the Graphics Processing Unit
- Not limited to sound generation
- 96K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
- CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo 50KHz)
- Number of sound channels limited by software (minimum 16)
- Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound signals
- Full stereo capabilities
- Wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, FM Sample synthesis, and AM
synthesis
- A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART
- Motorola 68EC020 (processor #7)
- Runs at 26.590MHz
- Perfect 68000 emulation
- General purpose control processor
Communication is performed with a high speed 64-bit data bus, rated at 2400
megabits/second. The 68000 is only able to access 16 bits of this bus at a
time. The Jaguar 2 contains eight megabytes (64 megabits) of fast
page-mode DRAM, in eight chips with 1024 K each.
Photos of the Jaguar II prototype motherboard are available at
http://www.atari-history.com/videogames/jaguar/jag2.html
The claim that it was reportedly 2-4 times more powerful than the Playstaion were probably an exxageration and would put it closer to the Dreamcast level beating even the N64 in terms of raw horsepower.
Edit: this page states that 900k texture mapped polygons were possible, and the biggest addition to the Tom update was probably the Texture Mapping Engine
Q: What's the "Jaguar II"?
A: There's been a little confusion with this topic, since at least two separate machines have been called a "Jaguar II". The first was to have been an integrated Jaguar/Jaguar CD-ROM unit. That project has since been cancelled, making the point moot.
The other Jaguar II was Atari's next video-game console. Though a final design was never reached, initial prototypes were assembled, yielding the following information:
Main chipset (codename "Midsummer") developed by Motorola.
Fully backwards compatible with the existing Jaguar. Would have been able to play all Jaguar games and use all Jaguar peripherals.
Uses new "Oberon" and "Puck" chips. "Oberon" was the next generation of the Jaguar's "Tom" chip, and "Puck" (also identified as "Thesus") was a redesigned "Jerry".
"Oberon" was so large that it required a dedicated cooling fan, powered by a separate power supply. It's uncertain if this inefficiency was simply due to the unfinished nature of the chip or not.
Processing speed "two to four times faster than the Sony PlayStation."
Full C/C++ development package available.
Jaguar 2 was Atari's next video-game console. In development from 1992 to the end of 1995, the Jaguar 2 was codenamed "Midsummer", and as the Atari Technical Reference Manual (TRM) explains:
“More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.â€
Act V. Scene 1.
"Midsummer is based around a pair of custom chips, called Oberon and Puck, which are primarily intended to be the heart of a mega high-performance computer for games and leisure. Oberon and Puck replace Tom and Jerry from the original Jaguar system. Oberon is the King of the fairies and Puck is Robin Goodfellow, his side-kick, from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream†by William Shakespeare."
According to the TRM "Midsummer is an evolutionary development of Jaguar to give significant performance gains for 3D games. It offers greatly improved performance for a small increase in system cost. It is intended to be software compatible with Jaguar and so will run the existing library of games. The following areas of the system have substantially improved performance:
· polygon rendering speed
· texture mapped polygons
· computational ability
· audio synthesis
Midsummer is intended to be easy to program in a high-level language. It has an additional RISC processor, the RCPU, with an instruction cache to improve the performance of C programs."
Though a final design was never reached, initial prototypes were assembled and Beta development boards known as Cobweb were being shipped to developers from August 1995, yielding the following information... (The Cobweb board is a prototype development board for Midsummer which has the Oberon b-test ASIC from Midsummer and the Jerry ASIC from Jaguar One. This system is intended to allow some software development to start before the availability of Puck. The Oberon b-test ASIC is not the final production version of Oberon, and is both slower and buggier then the production silicon.)
Main chipset (codename "Midsummer") developed by Motorola.
Fully backwards compatible with the existing Jaguar. Would have been able to play all Jaguar games and use all Jaguar peripherals.
Uses new "Oberon" and "Puck" chips. "Oberon" was the next generation of the Jaguar's "Tom" chip, and "Puck" was a redesigned "Jerry" (Jerry II).
"Oberon" was so large that it required a dedicated cooling fan, powered by a separate power supply. It's uncertain if this inefficiency was simply due to the unfinished nature of the chip or not.
Processing speed "two to four times faster than the Sony PlayStation."
"Orbit" integrated CD chip for on-board CD-ROM player
Full C/C++ development package available.
Block diagram note: This diagram summarises the system architecture of Midsummer. It does not show the peripheral connections, or the 68000, which is still present only for compatibility reasons and to boot the system on this bus. The RCPU, GPU and DSP are all based on the same Jaguar RISC architecture. All three processors are 32-bit RISC, executing close to one instruction per clock cycle. They are tuned for graphics and audio
processing; and offer single cycle multiply operations as well as normal RISC functions.
The RCPU is new for Midsummer, and has been specifically tuned for running C code. It is intended to act as the CPU of the system, and is the geometry engine for 3D graphics.
· 32-bit RISC processor
· 4K bytes of 2-way set-associative cache
· 1K bytes fast local data RAM
· cache line fill operations at the full 64-bit bus rate (133 MB/s)
· extended precision (16 x 32) single cycle multiplier, and fast divider
· 64-bit DMA engine to and from system DRAM at full bus rate
We don't really know how far Jaguar 2 was to completion. It is apparent however that some key developers were provided with Cobweb developer boards and hardware reference material (at least to revision 6 of the TRM). The Atari Museum has been able to power-up a Cobweb board which was fully functional, and it ran existing games which at least proves it was fully backward compatible. If any specific Cobweb/Midsummer code was written or developer demonstrations completed, we just don't know at this time. If you have any further information about the Jaguar 2, please contact AEX.
Megadrive1988 said:Now, perhaps Jaguar 2 / Midsummer made it into some arcade games, does anyone know? I know Jaguar 1 and perhaps faster varients of Jaguar 1 were used in some arcade games (Midway/Williams ?) but I don't know if any Jaguar 2 / Midsummer arcade games exist.