Meantime MacWeek hears that Apple Computer Inc is working on a new audiovisual architecture based on the PowerPC 601, for launch in about one year’s time. In addition to multimedia technology, the new Macs are expected to provide considerable performance improvements over Apple’s initial PowerPC Macs, scheduled to be announced on March 14. Two machines code-named TNT were reportedly outlined to developers in private briefings at MacWorld: Apple is said to have demonstrated how TNT would not extend the video and graphics capabilities currently standard on the Mac. They will have a new new independent video subsystem that will be able to drive the Macintosh’s monitor and an interlaced NTSC video monitor simultaneously, and offer convolution for 32-bit video, while current AV Macs can do so only for eight-bit images. A new QuickDraw accelerator is expected to offer dramatic speed increases to all Mac graphics, and a QuickTime accelerator will do the same for digital movies. The TNTs will also be the first Macs with Peripheral Component Interconnect bus – apparently in place of NuBus. An additional proprietary bus will give the CPU rapid access to RAM and TNT’s Level 2 cache. The bus, combined with a new RAM controller, will give a big leap in performance.Although the PowerPC RISC will take over the work done by the signal processor in current audiovisual Macs, most software packages written for AV Macs are said to work on the new machines, which are expected to come in two models, one full function and the other an economy version.
