Oberursel, May 12, 1997: phase 5 digital products today announced the expansion of the PowerUp product family for Amiga computers. Beside the two products that had been announced earlier, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 603e Power Board, there will be an additional model for the A1200, the Blizzard 603e+ Power Board, which combines the PowerPC RISC processor with an 68040 or 68060 CPU, as well as a model for the Amiga 1500/2000, the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. Additionally, it has been decided that all PowerUp board will come with SCSI on board instead of beeing an option, which adds additional value to these products.

With this expanded product line, phase 5 digital products offers a complete line of PowerUp accelerators for the Amiga 1200, 1500/2000, 3000 and 4000 models, and provides a smooth upgrade path for owners of 68030-, 68040- or 68060-based accelerators. Additionally, phase 5 will release a fast graphics card as an add-on to those PowerUp models that go into the desktop and tower models, namely the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. The 1997 PowerUp accelerator product line includes the follwoing models:

Cyberstorm PPC
The Cyberstorm PPC accelerator is the high-end PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 3000/4000(T) systems and systems with a compatible processor slot. It features a high-performance PowerPC604e RISC processor in different clock speeds and a socket for either a 68040 or a 68060 processor, a memory expansion option for up to 128 MByte of ultra-fast 64-bit memory, a Wide-Ultra-SCSI controller on board and an expansion slot for high-performance expansions such as the CyberVisionPPC (see below). This board is ideally suited for all A3000/A4000 users who already own an accelerator with either a 68040 or 68060 processor; for Cyberstorm users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer.

Blizzard 603e Power Board
The Blizzard 603e Power Board is the inexpensive PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 1200 systems. It features a high-performance PowerPC603e RISC processor @ 175 MHz clock speed and a socket for a 68030 companion processor @ 50 MHz, a memory expansion option for up to 64 MByte of high-speed memory, and a Fast-SCSI-II controller on board. This board is ideally suited for all A1200 users who already own an accelerator with a socketed 68030 processor; for Blizzard 1230-II, Blizzard 1230-III and Blizzard 1230-IV users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer.

Blizzard 603e+ Power Board
The Blizzard 603e+ Power Board is the high-end PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 1200 systems. It features a high-performance PowerPC603e RISC processor @ 200 MHz clock speed and a socket for a 68040 or 68060 companion processor, a memory expansion option for up to 64 MByte of high-speed memory, and a Fast-SCSI-II controller on board. This board will be ideally suited for all A1200 users who already own an accelerator with a 68040 or 68060 processor; for Blizzard 1240T/ERC and Blizzard 1260 users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer.

Blizzard 2604e Power Board
The Blizzard 2604e Power Board is the high-end PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 2000 (in the UK Amiga 1500) systems. It features a high-performance PowerPC604e RISC processor and a socket for either a 68040 or a 68060 companion processor, a memory expansion option for up to 128 MByte of ultra-fast 64-bit memory, a Wide-Ultra-SCSI controller on board and an expansion slot for high-performance expansions such as the CyberVisionPPC (see below). This board is ideally suited for all A1500/A2000 users who already own an accelerator with either a 68040 or 68060 processor; for Blizzard 2040/2060 users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer.

For information on technical specifications of the PoerUp accelerator product family, refer to the PowerUp Specifications


CyberVisionPPC - A high-end graphic card for use with the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board

The CyberVisionPPC is a high-performance graphic card which can be installed on the expnasion slot of the PowerPC604e-based PowerUp Accelerators, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. It is scheduled for delivery in August, and will become available simultaneously with the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. Especially for the Blizzard 2604 the use of the CyberVisionPPC is highly recommended as the slow access to the ECS chip memory or Zorro-II-based graphics boards in the A1500/A2000 may limit the system performance in applications with lots of graphic output; but also the performance of the Cyberstorm PPC will benefit significantly from the data transfer rates of up to 100 MB/s (from the processor into the video memory) in demanding applications such as fast 3D visualization and similar tasks.

Not only the ultra-fast access of the processor into the video memory, but also the internal performance of the CyberVisionPPC will provide a breathtaking performance. The CyberVisionPPC is equipped with the powerful PERMEDIA graphics controller, which provides an outstanding 3D performance of up to 42 million textured 3D pixels per second, with hardware-accelerated rendering functions such as z-buffering, gouraud-shading, fogging, blending and anti-aliasing. As the design of the PERMEDIA hardware suits perfectly for OpenGL implementations, it's 3D performance can support the CyberGL functionality of CyberGraphX V3 Native which comes along with the PowerUp boards. In combination with the high floating-point performance of the PowerPC604e processor a breathtaking performance in professional 3D applications can be achieved by this implementation. Additionally, the PERMEDIA processor supports functions like color space conversion, chroma keying and XY-scaling which will be used by the software MPEG decoding routines of CyberGraphX V3 Native.

The CyberVisionPPC used 64-bit wide SGRAM with a data transfer rate of up to 660 MB/s; this in combination with the fast RAM-DAC allows display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 pixel in true color mode and with a high refresh rate of at least 70 Hz. The boards comes along with 4 MB of display memory as standard. The recommended price for the CyberVisionPPC will be at UK Pound 219.00; customers of a PowerUp upgrade can buy this board for a special rate of UK Pound 189.00. In the USA the recommended price for the CyberVisionPPC will be at US$ 299.00; customers of a PowerUp upgrade can buy this board for a special rate of US$ 239.00.