The Atari AMY Sound Processor, like
so many other projects within Atari, has been
cloaked in some of the most deeply seeded Silicon Valley
lore, rumor, innuendo to just outlandish conspiracy
theories surrounding this highly advanced sound
processor. A chip developed in August 1983 that
had sound capabilities and quality that was 10 years
ahead of its time.
Yet the chip had numerous design
issues, was slated for a new next generation line of
16-bit Atari computer systems as part of the "Rainbow
chipset" (Silver, Gold and AMY) and was being discussed
throughout the company in various groups to be used in
other proposed designs. It was being considered for use
in next generation Atari game consoles and in the Atari
Arcade division.
When Atari was sold in July 1984 to
Tramel Technologies Ltd, which renamed itself to Atari
Corp, the AMY was examined by lead technologist Shiraz
Shivja, the father of the Atari ST. It was
considered for the new ST computer (codenamed RBP), but
with more development needed and a very tight schedule
and deadline, it would instead be considered for use in
an Atari 65XE computer designated the Atari 65XEM.
Issues continued with the AMY and it
would never materialize and this is where the classic
mystique of Atari lore kicks into high gear. Like
a Cold War spy thriller with people being silenced,
evidence being burned in a warehouse fire and spies
lurking behind every corner... A tinfoil hat conspiracy
theorists dream come true :-)
So, theories aside, lets focus on
facts. So first things first. The credit for
finally locating an actual fully intact AMY IC chip goes
to John Hardie of the
National Videogame Museum.
The Atari Musuem and the NVM work cooperatively with one
another and John was extremely gracious in donating the
AMY chip to the Atari Museum.
To the Left are links to a mother load of
technical documents, Chip simulation and design data,
network lists, software, harmonics and music creation
tools. So lets have at it, lets take all this data
and start to delve into the AMY and lets look into how
it functions, what issues it may have had so that they
can be corrected and try to reconstruct the chip logic
in Verilog and in Emulation.
Lets look into the software more
closely and lets see about the demo's and getting more
of them working. 2 very short sample sounds are
included on the Left side Menu Bar.
Leonard Tramiel gives a good
historical recounting of some of the events regarding
AMY during the Atari Corp years from July 1984 onward:
"I
was deeply involved with virtually all of the AMY work
once we came to Atari. To give
people important background here's the basic story:
AMY, stands for
Additive
Musical sYnthesis
which describes how the chip works. I won't go into
detail but it is very different from the way most
synthesis systems work and it is my favorite way to
synthesize sound.
It was developed by Atari before we got there and they
had working TTL versions that sounded GREAT but no
working chips. Chips were due to arrive in weeks and we
kept the project alive to see if they worked. They
didn't. The designer didn't have a good explanation for
what went wrong and being a full custom chip it would be
quite expensive to continue. The project was shut down.
A third party group that had done work with Atari, both
Inc and Corp, said they were interested. A deal was
reached where we would give them what we had and
permission for the designer to work with them. The deal
was that they could do whatever they liked with the
resulting chip as long as we able to use the chips in
our products. We would buy the chips from the
manufacturer and pay them a royalty.
After lots of false starts and details the 3rd party
didn't share with us they eventually called me and
announced that they had working chips that they wanted
to demonstrate to us. I said great, let's get working on
setting a royalty rate. They said they wouldn't let us
use the chips for any price. This went back and forth
MANY times. I reminded than that there were obligated to
licence the chips to us and they agreed that was true
but wouldn't do it.
We sued. I flew to give court testimony about how the
chip worked and why it was so unique. They agreed to
licence the chips. We said great but nothing happened.
We got word that they were going to demo the technology
we said "Great, what's our royalty arrangement?" They
said we couldn't use the chip. We filed a TRO to prevent
them from demoing the technology. We won. They agreed to
negotiate.
More time passed and we flew out to meet with them but
they kept agreeing and then denying that they had
agreed. We refused to continue negotiations unless
everything was put down on paper (it was a LONG time
ago). We never got a deal, the technology never was
released.
I never heard a working AMY chip but I think they did
exist because I worked with the head of the project at
their end on other things and found him to be honest. He
was not involved in any of the failed negotiations.
This is a very high level synopsis with LOTS of detail
missing but it has all of the information needed to
understand the situation."
If you are a former Atari or S&S
employee who worked on the AMY or have additional
information, documents or other technical data/software,
materials, etc... Please:
CONTACT US
