The premise for this, comes from The 8-Bit Guy's simple list of stuff he wanted in a new "retro" computer, and that he published on his site. I think he wrote that after building a couple "assemble it yourself" TTL-only computers kit.
One lady took the challenge. Her name is Stefany Allaire (she has a lot of experience, as a professional, in designing products, as well as in electronics).
Her concept is this : what if Jack Tremel never left(well, got kicked out), and Commodore never bought Amiga Corp and thus Commodore never released the Amiga computer, but in it's place released something that was more like the continuation of the C128. An alternative reality scenario, if you will.
So she set herself some rules and cooked up an hypothetical computer that could have come out from Commodore between 1985-1987. Some design elements from it :
-WDC 65816 micro-processor (same as Apple IIgs and Super Famicom/Snes) running @ 14Mhz
-2 SID chips (possibility of stereo sound of course)
-2 OPL2 fm synth chips (possibility of stereo sound here too
)-3 small FPGA cores that function as the equivalent of oldschool "custom chipsets" : Gavin, Beatrix and Vicky.
-2 graphics modes : 800x600 and 640x480. And some text modes too. Support for hardware sprites (32 on screen, fixed size(32x32) for now but might end up with support for different-sized sprites). And a blitter
-cartridge port for games carts and others, and all the ports for peripherals that the C64 had (although C64 software isn't compat with this machine ATM, but might be added by user, or even maybe officially added at some point)
-both digital and analog video out (via DVI)
-MIDI IN + MIDI OUT
-and many more, I'll add stuff here soon
She says the machine will be open source EXCEPT for the 3 FPGAs, which she won't give the schematics for (makes sense : a computer-maker business wouldn't give away the schematics of it's custom chipsets
). So if people want to make some hardware add-ons, and mods, that'd be fine. But she doesn't exactly see/want this to be upgraded/changed like crazy because then what's the point? It's not a unique retro platform with lots of character anymore, it's just another PC build. I got to say that I really like her vision for this product, seems very focused and with ton of attention to detail as well as a good vue d'ensemble. I like how she want to make sure it's not "too powerful", so as to be era-accurate. I also like that she's begging people not to put a fucking raspberry Pi in her new old computer 
totally respect that, lolHere are 2 videos of Stefany explaining her new platform at Commodore Retro Expo 2018. Lots of very interesting info on the system here, way more than what I highlighted (I'll rewatch and take notes and add stuff to this very post soon).
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9UgnMVGl_A
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsuoHoCus5M&t=1040s
Early list of specs :
https://www.c256foenix.com/forum/the-sp ... ust-update