Antwerp, Belgium - 11 July, 2008.
Hyperion Entertainment is very pleased to announce that Amiga OS 4.1 has gone into final testing and is scheduled for release mid-Q3/2008. Building on the solid foundations of Amiga OS 4.0, Amiga OS 4.1 introduces a wealth of substantial new functionality which is a prerequisite for the deployment of industry standard applications on the Amiga platform.
State-of-the-art applications such as modern web-browsers, productivity software or digital imaging software typically operate on large datasets with a corresponding memory footprint which rapidly outstrips the physical memory of any computer system. Amiga OS 4.1 offers intelligent memory paging and uses transparent disk based memory - but only when you need it.
Sophisticated media content creation packages, multimedia applications such as video players and 3D games have sparked a revolution in storage technology with hard-drive capacities now reaching the terabyte range. Amiga OS 4.1 introduces an all new filesystem, JXFS, the fastest and most robust filesystem available for the Amiga platform, with support for drives and partitions of multiple terabytes.
Graphics cards too have become increasingly powerful and versatile. Amiga OS 4.1 implements 3D hardware accelerated Porter/Duff image composition which is deeply integrated into the system. The upside is not only that the Amiga OS 4.1 user-interface offers unprecedented functionality and customization options such as transparent windows with arbitrary shapes. The use of a compositing engine also results in totally flicker-free screen-updates.
Building on this compositing engine is Amiga OS 4.1's implementation of the "Cairo" device-independent 2D rendering library which has become a de facto industry standard and is used in applications as diverse as Firefox 3, Java/ClassPath's SWING and even Open Office.
With these new features, Amiga OS 4.1 paves the way for countless exciting possibilities for the Amiga platform. Indeed, Amiga OS 4.1 is not only the most advanced AmigaOS incarnation to date, it is also the best way to reacquaint yourself with times when computing was fun!
A non-exhaustive list of key new functionality of Amiga OS 4.1:
- Intelligent memory paging
- Hardware compositing engine (Radeon R1xx and R2xx family)
- Implementation of the "Cairo" device-independent 2D rendering library
- Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) support for greater digital camera compatibility
- JXFS filesystem with the support for drivers and partitions of multiple terabyte size
- Improved Workbench functionality
- New and improved DOS functionality (full 64 bit support, universal notification support, automatic expunge and reload of updated disk resources)
- Improved 3D hardware accelerated screen-dragging
- Reworked AmiDock with true transparency
- Reworked Warp3D Radeon drivers with new functionality
- And much, much more.
Required hardware: AmigaOne
Required graphics card for hardware compositing: Radeon 1xx or Radeon 2xx
Recommended graphics card: Radeon 9250
Amiga OS 4.1 will ship in a cardboard package (box preview) and will be distributed world-wide by Acube Systems Srl. Details on pricing and availability will be forthcoming.
