•Phoebe Rise PC 2 design team leader Peter

Fox tall<s to Marl< WebbShe's eccentric and offbeat. Herfriends have to think twice

about what she says but herpoetic pronouncements areoften thought-provoking, in afunny kind of way. If you arenot familiar with the American

twenty-something comedysitcom then you won't knowPhoebe or her Friends. She is

the name, if not quite theinspiration, of Acorn's newbarrier-breaking Rise OSworkstation, Phoebe Risc pe 2.As development versions ofPhoebe go out for testing andthe finishing touches are madeto Rise OS 4, your favouriteAcorn magazine has taken afleeting opportunity to talk toPeter Fox (PF), leader of theproject which has realised thisexciting new technology wewill soon be using in anger.EditorMark Webb (MW) putthe questions.

MW What's the history behind the

new Acorn computer?

PF Basically I got together with

Chris Cox and Ray Pinchard and a

couple of other guys from sales and

marketing at the end of November '96

after we'd done the StrongARM

upgrade. I did thot with Mike Stephens,

who's the lead software engineer on

Phoebe. We crashed out what we'd like

to do as an upgrade, to improve on the

Risc pc, whot could we put in - things

like PCI came out of that, and how to

remove the bottle neck on the main

memory bus. We got together the keyfeatures and asked ourselves: do we do

it as an upgrode, do we do a new

machine? That was a real

brainstarming session and from that we

presented our ideas to Peter Bondar. It

was still Acorn Risc Technologies at that

time and he was the technical director.

He was keen to get a little bit more in

it. He wanted a little bit more pazazz.

So that is how we ended up with the

multiprocessing end. This is also where

the entertaining story of multiple VIDCs

came in. This was somebody's wild

idea. It was also something that was

quashed straightaway.

MW These were early days then?

PF Peter Bondar's presentation at

the Acorn World show in 1996 came

from our brainstorming and some things

presented then never actually happened.

MW But the proiect began to take

shope?

PF Once we had got a core

solution we began to get a team

together. Mike and myself were key

people initially because we'd both done

the StrongARM. Alex Bienek was

brought in, who is a stalwart in Acorn

and has been here for about 15 years. I

don't know if he'll like being called a

'stalwart'. He's been involved in

podules, 10MD 1, lots of stuff. He

wanted to get into the new ASIC and

championed that for us. So the three of

us started running and we recruited our

lead hardware engineer to help out. The

rest of the team came fram other

projects as and when they became

available as the year (1997)

progressed.

MW How many people were

involved?

PF We ran for quite a time as a

small core team, four or five people

trying to sort it out and eventually it

really grew into a big team. I suppose

in mid '97 it became a big, really big,

praject - big priority.

MW What was the design looking

like at this stage?PF We couldn't fit the board in

the existing case. The power supply

was too small and the PCI power

drawings were looking entertaining. We

put feelers out to try to find a decent

case. It's a tremendously expensive

thing to develop a new case. It's

hundreds of thousands of pounds. We

found the new Intel NLXstandard form

factor which they are developing for

their next generation motherboards. It's

a wonderful design which allows you toslide the board in and out. There's no

electrical connection to it except for an

edge connector. We found some

manufacturers who were just

developing those so we got in right at

the beginning. We are using a case

which is unique to Acorn development,a mini tower. We wanted the

professional look of a mini tower. It

gives us the expansion that we think

most people probably want.

MW What about the slice concept

introduced with Risc PC?

PF People loved the slice idea

and we did look at case suppliers. The

mini tower gave us a good

compromise. Most people only have

two slices, some three. You get the

extremes and the enthusiast with ten

slices. But we had to compromise and

say seven expansion cards and fourhard-drive slots. There are four PCI and

three podule slots so you've got plenty

of room there. We got some

reservations about having no slices but

the mini tower is a good solution. We

used a couple of design houses in

competition with each other to come up

with a styling which is modern, looks

professional, stands out from the crowd,

is not like a Pc. These were the key

things, not necessarily to say it's an

Acorn but to look professional,

upmarket and different. We used a

Fitch who have also designed for

lomega, Reebok and those sort of

companies. We showed people designs

at Acorn World in 97 but we didn't get

much feedback. Most people were

more interested in the technology than

the look. I think the desire for the case

was to extend it to be innovative to

other markets as well as our existing

one. If it looks wacky then someone is

going to say "what is that?" Hopefully

we can get other niches in the

marketplace because of the design. The

big argument I've had with people is

that people say that they don't like it

and then come back two days later and

still remember it and I say that yellow

front means you've recalled it. We

looked at a transparent design (like the

Apple iMac) but we discarded it. We

don't have a mechanical design

department so I picked up themechanical side of it. So the case and

that sort of thing I've ended up

detailing. As the project manager you

have to pick up all the stuff others don't

have time to do.

MW What hove Mike Stephens

and his colleagues come up with forRise os 4?

PF We had quite a lot of

discussions about what to improve

about the software package, over and

above the existing RISC OS, and to

change the things people had the most

gripes about. Hence things like the new

filecore system which gives us long

filenames, many more files in a

directory, the new look canfiguration

setup, new pinboard. We've taken the

user interface and made it more

sociable for people. You have to accept

that people have seen and used the

other platforms and they've seen some

nice features and we'd be mad not to

incorporate similar features. They've

taken our ideas so it's been a two waystreet. Other than that it's been about

making RISC OS far more tailored to

the StrongARM and the architecture of

the new design. A lot of work has gone

into revising the kernel. Mike is the

kernel guy and has got some

tremendous performance increase in the

software alone by just rewriting and

retailoring more for the platform. ThefaCt is that we can show a machine at

Wakefield at 11Mhz and people go

"hey that's about the same speed as a

Risc PC" and in fact it's running at

about a third of the speed of a Risc PC

and it looks reasonably usable ..That's a

testament to how the software is

running now.

68 ARCH1MEDESWORLD VOLUME 15 ISSUE 10 1998

Ben Avison (S/W Design) Andrew Dawson (IOMD2) Ca/inBartlett (Manufacturing)

Bernard Sidd/e (IOMD2 and H/W Design) Tim Roddis (S/W Design) Murray Papworth (Manufacturing) Steve Tay/or (H/W and S/W Test)

Chris Garry (IOMD2)

MW RiSe os has to cope withnew hardware features?

PF The software team has done

all the background to PCI, the tweakingof RISC OS to allow PCI to work.

They've done control of the new sound

system which has got codecs in it.

We've incorporoted an industry

standard codec, an Analog Devices

part. It gives us stereo line in and out,

headphones, microphone, twin joystick

ports, MIDI port. It's a Soundblaster

compatible codec. It gives youhardware volume controls so there are

two volume controls and software

mixing of all your sound inputs. So

what we've done is we feed everything

into the codec - VIDC sound, CD

sound, line input, and its own sound ­

and you can mix all those together to

get levels. It's got some nice little

sound features. It's got a wave blaster

header so you could have a wave table

synthesiser plug in. We've got a

software emulation of it on PC and it's

phenomenal. It's so sweet.

MW What can a Phoebe owner

expect to see on the desktop?

PF We've gone for a complete

new look. It's more upmarket in its

look and feel in terms of the icons,

backdrops, marbling and texture and

everything else, rother than the

brightish pale blue and grey. We've

gone for 256 colour icons and actually

being able to give some nice shade

and fine lines, more tailored tawards

the big desktop, less for the 640x480

but more for the 102 4x7 68 and I

think it's worked very well. There are250 new icons which hove been

designed in house by Mark Moir. He's

very into grophic work and he's done

ARCH1MEDESWORLD VOLUME 15 lSSUE 10 1998 69

anather 250 law resalution versions.

One thing I really like in the software is

the new configuration program which

we've made a much more general

area. Third party applications can be

added to the configuration so you don't

have to go searching through your hard

drive to try to find your app. You know

you just double-click on !Boot and you

will be straight into the application's

configuration. Also there's a lot more

there, like your pinboard setup rather

than a pull-down menu on the

pinboard. It works well and we've had

good feedback from that.

MW What testing af the software

goes on?PF What we are doing for this

version is we are selling 100 machines

to developers which will give them the

opportunity to develop their hardware

and software but it also gives us the

opportunity to get tremendousfeedback from them. We will audit

internally but will give the developers

the chance ta infarm us of problems

and what they dan't like. We've

already taken customer feedback and

it's been looked at in terms of the new

design. Acorn's own offices are one of

the biggest users of Acorn computers

so there's a lot of feedback internally

- they all whinge and moan about X,

Y, Z. We've had feedback as recently

as Wakefield and we've toyed withthat and worked out what we can and

can't do. The feedback from shows is

taken in and used.

MW Where does Phoebe's extra

processing power came fram?PF In terms of hardware, the

machine had to be faster. The memory

bus was obviously strangulating

StrongARM in the Risc Pc. You can see

on certain applications that it is

struggling. We wanted to go for themarket standard which was 66Mhz at

the time. It's very difficult to get al~

1 OOMhz motherboard to work reliablyand it becomes a bit of a black art. We

needed a new 10MD and we needed a

new VIDC20. Also the way the

memory system worked was a

problem, just by the nature of the way

that some of the signals were routed.

So we had to change the orchitecture

slightly to try to be a bit more of a

grant/request system. We could see

that we had to look at a different way,

a bit more of an industry standard way

of running the memory system.

MW Was such a radicalredesign

necessary?PF With doing the StrongARM

and 7500 we'd seen the way that

signals worked, things which mean

that you are almost on the limit of that

machine and really we needed to look

at some other way to give us the

confidence that we could hit the high

speed. It's general feel and

experience. We went for the new

IOMD2 which made it easier to

expand things, to give us the

multiprocessing capability in hardware,

to give us more DMA channels, better

control. We moved the keyboard and

mouse PS2 ports elsewhere so they

are proper industry standard, the

theory being that you can plug any

keyboard or mouse into it and it will

work. The new IOMD2 also gives us

the opportunity to have PCI

interfacing. The architecture we had

wouldn't give us PCI. Effectively PCI is

interpreted as a second StrongARMand we do a conversion to make it

look like it. It's a nice way of doing it

and seems to work. You have multiple

masters. The StrongARM on the board

happens to be one. The PCI bridge hasto be another because it's a master

device. In terms of the IOMD2, you

make the PCllook like a StrongARM

to then make the actual interface

easier, very complicated but easier.

Then you have another master which

is your multi-processor card. You have

three masters, and you can have more

than one StrongARM master. You can

put three StrongARMs in a row and

have some glue logic that feeds that

down to the main processor but you

can only access one at a time. We

changed to SDRAM to give higher

speed, the industry standard at the

moment and it's quite cheap, which is

great.

MW How many engineers workedon the hardware?

70 ARCH1MEDESWORLD VOLUME 15 lSSUE 10 1998

Software

Phoebe - Risc PC 2 Specification

discipline to get certain things done

and in order, and we get hounded by

Chris Cox ta get things out of thedoor!

MW Finally, what about thatname?

PF Me and Ray come up with

Phoebe. We were brain-storming. You

hove to come up with 0 code name. I

liked Friends and Ray liked Friends.

Phoebe was 0 bit different. All the PCBs

hove got names. The processor board

is Rachel and the podule backplane is

Monica. The ASIC was called Chandler

originally. Phoebe has stuck. It's not

that common, it's spelled 0 bit

differen~y. We hod 0 huge list from the

Clan but it was very difficult to come up

with something which really stood out

and mode you realise what it was, and

the world hod kind of got this Phoebe

image in its head.

sorting out any manufacturing issues.

There's also on audit period. If Chris

Cox has 0 key RISC OS product then

it's 0 logical step to use members of

the some team again because they

hove the skill set and the expertise but

it just depends on who is available.

MW What's it like working atAcorn?

PF It's 0 relaxed atmosphere. I

don't crock the whip and shout and

yell. But everyone's aware of the

deadlines and people put the time in.

Getting ready for Wakefield we only

hod the machine working properly on

the Thursday for the show on Saturday

and you are frantically putting in the

time. No-one does a 9-5 but everyone

puts in the time and effort and

dedication. All the engineers are in

jeans and T-shirts. It is a relaxed kind

of place but you have to have

Acorll~

;;;:;;

PF A lot of it is done by one

guy in terms of actually doing the

major design, one other person on

layout. We hove 0 CAD system with

o CAD layout guy. A few others feed

in on certain areas, on PCI, on

sound, on the podule interface.

MW And were does Peter Fox

fit in?

PF I came in September

1994. Previously I worked for GEC

Marconi in-flight systems. I

developed video entertainment

systems for Boeing aircraft, back of

seat video ete. They are still going

and if you fly United Airlines you'll

see my work. I came to work on

Stark, which was 0 portable we put

together in 95/96, the RISC OS

portable which never happened.

Then I did StrongARM and nowPhoebe.

MW What's the background of

the other engineers?PF Some of the team hove

worked for other PC manufacturers,

some are straight from college,others from hi-tech electronics

companies. Mike, the key software

guy, has been here for five or six

years. He came from 0 research

consultancy and was 0 RISC OS user.

MW Is there 0 certain enthusiasm

for 0 non Intel product?

PF Acorn's 0 very good place towork but I didn't come into Acorn os on

enthusiast. I came in os 0 hardware

designer and the majority of the team

are not Acorn enthusiasts, which gives

us the opportunity to come in with on

independent view and with new designideas. Mike was into Acorn machines

but it's now his job. Some of the

software people came in becouse they

liked the product and used it. Hardware

people look to work in consumer

electronics in the UK. The company has

o very good reputation in the

electronics field, with the ARM spin-off,

and now we are 0 consultancy so there

are opportunities for doing other things.

MW Does a team like this staytogether?PF Some members of the team

are already on other things. The

specialists in X, Y, Z come in, do their

bit, and then go away again. A team

like this will disperse into other projects

within the company. What those

projects will be, nobody knows. Most

of us are in until the end but some of

us will be moving on once we've got to

o point when we manufacture. I'm

here to the bitter end. Once it's in

manufacturing I'm still fully employed

• New Kernel to support the new hardware, better task swapping,cached screen ete.

• New filecore to support more files in a directory (up to 80,000), long

file names, bigger discs (up to 128Gb for IDE) ete.

• New ADFS to support new IDE interface• New CDFS

• New and improved look to desktop including the following:• New Icons

• New Wimp

• New pinboard• New filer

• New configure

• New help

• Improved sound support including:• New Midi

• New sound control

• New disc images/sounds and games ete.

Hardware

• 233MHz SA110

• New IOMD2 - improved bus speed 64 MHz

• Up to 512M SDRAM - 32M as standard

• New VIDC20 - 1 00% performance increase• 4M EDO VRAM

• 4 pC! slots running 32bit 33Mhz interface

• 3 standard podules• 4M ROM

• E-IDE allowing 4 drives running 16Mb transfers• 32x CD

• PC style Game port - joysticks, Midi ete., line in, line out, mie. in and

headphones out, Soundblaster sound with Waveblaster header

• 2 serial ports, IrDA support and a parallel port

• Multiprocessing support in Hardware

• New case, new power supply

ARCH1MEDES WORLD VOLUME 15 lSSUE 10 1998 71