IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2016 - 67

Entrenched competition was abundant, supported by superior marketing, development, distribution, and ecosystems
(see Table 1). The IBM PC-compatible computers, driven by
Microsoft Windows on Intel processors, took over the productivity computer market. Apple Macintosh computers and Windows PCs eventually added some of the general capabilities,
like multimedia, that were originally unique to the Amiga.
Commodore International Ltd. went out of business in 1994,
and the Amiga name and intellectual property were sold off.
However, there is still a devoted Amiga fan base,
decades later. "Having outlived a number of its corporate
owners, and spurred on by its passionate users, the Amiga
computer is going back to market again-but this time in
very different forms" [5]. The Amiga software was ported
to run in emulation over other operating systems, including
Microsoft Windows (see [21]). The community is still producing new hardware compatible with the original design,
more than 30 years after the first Amiga 1000 was released.
An example is the Amiga 500 MIST FPGA computer based
on the open-source Minimig (Mini Amiga) design [22].
The Amiga fans can still play on their favorite computer.
Today, modern mobile phones and tablets have displaced
game consoles and PCs for gaming (again, consider the
success of Angry Birds.) As part of that hardware evolution,
these devices feature strong animation hardware support, pioneered by systems like the Amiga.

SUMMARY
A small team of engineers combined their influences to
define a groundbreaking system as a computer and as a game
console. This Amiga hardware design supported the first multimedia multitasking operating system, ten years ahead of
Apple or Microsoft. This Amiga platform in turn enabled
visual artists and musicians.
The foresight of Miner led to the Amiga combining the
graphics and multimedia capabilities of a next-generation
game console with the power of a 16-bit office minicomputer
into an affordable home computer. By exposing a few key,
and innovative at the time, hardware features fully to software control, the Amiga enabled a growing software community to take consumer video game and multimedia
development to the next level.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Joseph Decuir (joe.decuir@gmail.com) earned a B.S.
degree in electrical engineering and computer science and an
M.S. degree in bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has contributed to public engineering standards, including V-series modems, USB, and Bluetooth (four
patents). He is a Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to
computer graphics and video games (including nine patents
on work at Atari and Amiga), a member of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Board of Governors, and a Consumer Electronics Society Distinguished Lecturer. He was
the chair of the 2015 and 2016 IEEE Global Humanitarian

Technology Conferences and is currently the secretary for
IEEE Region 6.
Ronald H. Nicholson, Jr. (rhn@nicholson.com) studied
engineering mathematics at the University of California,
Berkeley, and has worked at several companies in Silicon Valley, both large and small. He has ten issued U.S. patents,
including four for work creating the original Amiga architecture. He is currently a mobile app developer as well as performing DSP and IoT consulting. He is a Member of the IEEE.

REFERENCES
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OCTOBER 2016

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