Introduction
Comdex all starts with the Sunday night Bill Gates keynote. We barely caught all of it, not that it doesn’t get enough coverage. Afterwards, we got a jump on the announcement of the NV17M from Nvidia, a powerful, mighty powerful entrant in the mobile graphics market.
Bill Gates – Keynote Speech Was…… uhm
Far be it from us to say that the world’s richest man needs a makeover, but while the Microsoft PR machine talked up his Comdex opening keynote on Sunday night as being “upbeat”, it sounded a lot like nerdy smugness to us. Time for Bill G to get some of that legendary brain power of his around something of substance, and to demonstrate some true visionary-ness, rather than delivering the kind of patter reserved for Dot Com founders of yore, in days of yore.
“The appetite of businesses and consumers worldwide for innovative PC technologies is stronger than ever,” said he.
“A key reason for the early success of Windows XP is its incredibly strong security — it has literally hundreds of security improvements over Windows 98, making it the most secure Windows operating system ever.” Was another nice one.
A little better was, “Despite the current slowdown, we’ll see at least a thirty fold increase in e-commerce spending over the next 10 years, a quadrupling of the number of e-mail addresses, and even faster growth in instant messaging. Today, more than half of America’s homes have PCs; by 2010, three-quarters will have at least one, and many will have two or three. In this Digital Decade, computing technology will transform every part of our lives — and fulfill the promise of truly secure, truly personal computing.” Our only criticism would be, how many of those multiple PC households are going to be cannibalizing their second or third PC for parts for the one they actually use? I think you know what we’re talking about.
To be fair, this is rote PR stuff that gets put out every year at this time, and we lap it up. And to be even more evenhanded, Microsoft bashing is equally as boring as listening to Microsoft executives, but we have to say, “Bill, you need to get better handlers. Try bashing Larry Ellison, or making fun of StarOffice. Something to get us in the fighting mood.”
In Vegas No One Can Hear You Scream… Sometimes
By now, you’ve probably heard that companies have cancelled their presence here, and a lot of people have given it a miss completely. This has helped to drastically reduce the odds of getting a decent run at the BlackJack tables at Bellagio. Otherwise, it is a blessing in disguise. We will probably be spared the casual Comdex visitor that inflated the shows’ attendances in recent years.
We’re not going to miss the guys and gals who wandered around the show floor aimlessly looking at booths with the loudest presentations and greedily jumping at the nearest freebie to be had. But whether they are here or not, price gouging at the concession stands is not going to abate.
Fortunately, we’re here to do business and there’s enough to pique our interest, and hone our cynicism.
Fall Comdex – What Sounds Good
Besides the new rules and security measures that are in effect at this year’s Fall Comdex, no one really yet knows what to expect. The downturn does afford some unique opportunities. This year we were able to get appointments with pretty much anyone that we wanted to see; in fact, so many folks wanted to see us that we’re not going to get around to seeing everyone we would have liked. You can expect reports on the usual suspects, but this year we are also including many that we have not covered in THG in the past.
Bear in mind, Comdex used to be the premier showcase for companies to announce new products and show off the latest in technology. However, things have changed. In many ways companies are no longer waiting for Comdex to announce new products, instead they announce them the day before or perhaps even the week before. Why, you might ask? To get the drop on the competition, of course! Nvidia did a good thing by giving the NV17M a clear berth early this morning.
The NV17M
The new NV17N mobile chipset has features that should now make Nvidia perhaps the next major player in the mobile video chipset market. On the surface the specs look impressive. Still, only four companies are marketing notebooks that are based on the Nvidia mobile chipset, which is the limiting factor for Nvidia in this market. However, by focusing on the high-end of the mobile market, much as nForce focuses on the high-end of the motherboard market, Nvidia is strategically staking a claim to the market 18 months from now, as much as positioning itself for today’s business. All the buzz Nvidia generates certainly doesn’t hurt.
The specs of the new NV17N are impressive, with new technology and performance that have never been seen in notebook/laptop technology, until now. We’ll get into it some more in our next Comdex update after our briefing with the company, but here is something to whet your appetite.
The NV17M is a monster as far as mobile graphics go. Nvidia has added some interesting features that will surely put this out of the reach of the average road warrior, but in the relentless pursuit of dominance, no integration stone is being left unturned by Nvidia.
PowerMizer VPE
PowerMizer is Nvidia’s term for its GPU version of SpeedStep. The company claims to turn off ilde GPU blocks, or in other words, if you ain’t using all those 3D functions, they’re not burning up batter time. To entice the road warrior, PowerMizer VPE (video processing engine) is supposed to offload the CPU from DVD playback functions that other mobile graphics chips don’t reach.
In part, Nvidia is being sensitive to the demands of the mobile market, but in many other ways, Nvidia is also marketing it’s high-end technology knowing that it is combatting the CPU for battery share as well as OEM mindshare.
As you can see, the NV17M needs to be energy efficient because it’s taking the mobile graphics market into the $300 graphics card category.
We also liked the anti-aliasing pitch Nvidia makes for the NV17M, including Nvidia’s Quincux AA mode. Of course, the typical laptop display doesn’t lend itself to high-quality game play, and perhaps, with NV17M, Nvidia is giving the road warrior another reason to consider laptops by offering them some decent 3D gameplay on those trans-Atlantic flights, as well as saving batteries when someone pops in The Godfather trilogy DVD combo.
It’s another bold move by Nvidia, although it may be more interesting to enthusiasts than to the average laptop user. Quality graphics come at a price, and clearly, Nvidia is ahead of the market in building for its mobile part a feature set that is so rich.
Integrated GPU DRAM packaging
However, the real clincher is the integrated GPU DRAM packaging Nvidia is proposing for the NV17M.
We could be wrong, but this looks pretty much like the $300 graphics card-to-go we alluded to earlier. The tight integration of memory and GPU gives Nvidia the performance it promises, and the packaging provides it with options to expand in future generations while keeping to the same form factor, and similar power optimization techniques.
With NV17M, Nvidia managed to do at Comdex what it did at Computex with nForce – score a PR coup. We’ll have more on this story in our follow up Comdex stories when we have had a chance to spend some time at a private briefing with Nvidia.
Points of Interest
But, it’s not all Nvidia either. When thinking about what we want to see, we had to stop and think about what products would really be of interest to us. If we had to pick the top five things that we hope to see at this Comdex, they would be as follows.
- Number One on our list would have to be the Nvidia nForce. Did we say it’s not all Nvidia? By now many of you have already seen the X-Box on display in demo stands at your local dealer. The nForce is built on some of the same technology as the X-Box. Many folks are waiting for Nvidia to blow the entire motherboard market wide open, but we don’t really know what to expect from the market. It’s a product that is generating a lot of interest and hype, and it’s getting itself a reputation already.
- Number two would have to be 802.11a which is the new high speed 54mbit/72Mbit wireless standard technology. Of course, by now most of you have seen the 802.11b wireless technology (How “b” ever made it out the door before “a”, we will never know), which is capped at 11Mbit. We never really felt that 802.11b at 11Mbit was something that we could use. Like most people we are used to using switched 100Mbit, so stepping back down to something that runs at only 11Mbit felt like trying to push a car up a steep hill. Of course you have to give something up to cut the wires, but if they can move it to 54mbit/72mbit and make it affordable, this is something that is sure to get our attention.
- Along the same lines as number two is number three, which would have to be the new Gigabit over copper 1000 Base-T network cards and switches. Speed costs, and it is all about how fast you want to go. Being the speed freaks that we are, we sure would like to move into the 1000 Base-T fast lane, but the cost of both the cards and the switches are holding us back. Companies have promised price cuts that might finally make this a reality. We will just have to wait and see.
- When talking about the bells and whistles of speed, one can not help but wonder what the news will be as far as advancements in processors are concerned. So, number four would have to be processor technology. Of course, we have pretty much seen the new processors from both AMD and Intel already, but what about some of these new designs that are supposed to dominate the future of computing? Sad to say, we don’t think that we are going to get our wish here, but one can always hope. (We really hope that we can find the applications that actually take full advantage of our current batch of CPUs and use all their power to full benefit. That’s what we’re going to be on the look out for.)
- The fifth and final thing we would like to see is something that is both useful and innvoative. What do we mean by this? We would really like to see something that we haven’t seen before. Something that is so new and different that has the “I must buy it factor” that has been lacking with many of the products that have been coming out. Maybe this will come from a company that isn’t a major player. We know this is only wishful thinking, but isn’t that, in many ways, the real reason that we attend Comdex each year? Has the “WOW” factor been lost in today’s computing?
We had lofty expectations for BillG’s keynote, and we have lofty expectations for the rest of this year’s Comdex. It’s not the good old days, but then, it never is — and we are sure that we will walk away wanting to return to Comdex again next year. At least we hope so. Follow us around in the coming days as we post our coverage and let us know what you make of this year’s Comdex from what you read.
Please follow-up by reading THG At Comdex 2001 – Day 1.
