Computex Has Grown
First of all Computex has become much more important than it used to be. I remember my fist Computex in 1997, when the whole show was only hosted in Taipei’s convention center, located right next to the Grand Hyatt hotel. Besides motherboard makers and manufacturers of some other devices as fans, network cards/hubs and other small, but important things there wasn’t that much to see. In none of the three previous years Computex had been used for any major product launches as well, so that this show used to be a small, nice and stress free event, which I always saw as a very welcome reason to travel to Asia and learn about the exiting culture there. This year Computex started with the Thunderbird launch and the DDR-conference, it was spread between two buildings, and most exhibitors had some really interesting stuff to tell.
Three Editors Were Still Not Enough
Computex2000 turned out to be very different than what it used to be and we knew it would. I decided to take two editors with me on this trip and to establish a testing site in Taipei at the same time. I was certain that we three could cover the whole show with ease and have enough time to do some early hands-on testing as well. I had to learn that I underestimated the amount of information we were confronted with. Frank and I were on the show floor all day and wrote our articles in the evening. I squeezed in some time for daily workouts in the hotel gym, which left almost no time for sleep. We had hardly any time for dinner and certainly no chance to enjoy any of the parties. The testing had to be done in the middle of the night. Frank and I used to go to bed at 5 or 6 AM only to face our next appointments some 4 hours later.
Earthquakes Aren’t Fun
This year the show ended on Friday. Frank and I stayed a bit longer, to have our first experience of a Taiwanese earthquake. In the night between June 10 and 11 around 2:30 AM there was an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale in central Taiwan, which shook us really well on the 14th (Frank) and 19th (me) floor of the Grand Hyatt in Taipei. For both of us this was the first earthquake of our life and I can say that we really could have done without this experience. Being on the 19th floor in an earthquake is rather unpleasant, to say the least. Still, besides the shock, nothing happened to either of us. Not everyone was that lucky. We’d like to send our sympathies to the relatives of the two people that died and the 36 people who were injured in this earthquake.
Frank left on Sunday evening, flying back to Germany and I hopped over to Bangkok on Monday morning to get a couple of relaxing days, see the Grand Palace and enjoy the excellent Thai food. Finally I returned back home on Wednesday to get ready for AMD’s Duron launch.
VIA
I am sure that all of you are aware of VIA’s plans to equip all their upcoming performance chipsets with DDR-SDRAM support. I was told that VIA’s first DDR266-chipset will be the successor of the Apollo Pro133A and thus a Socket370-chipset for Intel’s Celeron and Pentium III/Coppermine processors. Right after that there will be VIA’s solution for SocketA with DDR, supporting AMD’s Athlon/Thunderbird and Duron processors. The time frame seems to be around September for the Apollo Pro2000 and maybe a month more for the KT266 (chipset names preliminary).
Finally VIA is also releasing the ‘Cyrix III’, their low-cost/low-power x86-processor for Socket370. The core of this chip was formerly known as ‘Samuel’ and has been developed by Centaur’s team, which was recently taken over by VIA. It’s quite interesting to hear what has happened behind the scenes of VIA’s ‘processor division’. You may remember that VIA purchased Cyrix as well as Centaur to supply their own processors. Since this transaction most developers of Cyrix have left their old company, leaving VIA with the brand name ‘Cyrix’ and the licenses owned by Cyrix and National only. The development team of Centaur around Glen Henry seems to be still intact, but the guys there did not appreciate VIA’s decision to call their latest development ‘Cyrix III’. Still, VIA’s CEO Wen Chi Chen made an executive decision, taking in consideration that the Cyrix-name is having a significantly better image than good old ‘WinChip’.
I was told that for the time being only the Cyrix III 533 would be available and we’ve already got a sample under testing right now. I was surprised to find out however, that VIA’s website says the following: “[Cyrix III] Featuring high performance speeds of 533MHz up to 667MHz“. I suppose that under these circumstances we will test the Cyrix III at 566, 600, 633 and 667 MHz as well. The prices for Cyrix III processors are supposed to lie between $75 and $160.
You also know that VIA has got a controlling interest in S3. The first product of this cooperation has just been released as the ‘PM133’ chipset, which is a combination of VIA’s successful Apollo Pro 133A chipset for Intel Celeron/Pentium III processors and S3’s Savage 4 3D-accelerator. You can see in the diagram above that PM133 will also include an optional AGP4x-slot, in case that an external graphics card should be preferred over the integrated Savage 4 solution. PM133 will be a direct competitor against Intel’s upcoming 815 chipset. While the pure chipset performance of i815 might be superior to PM133, it is expected that the integrated graphics of i815 will lag quite far behind the integrated Savage 4 graphics of PM133. Thus PM133 will most likely not only be the more cost effective, but also the better performing solution for customers interested in chipsets with integrated graphics.
All in all this Computex was the first one were I saw VIA officials in excellent mood, not giving the stressed out and nervous impression from the past. VIA has the chance to become a really big player in the chipset market, and if the Cyrix III processor and its successors should be able to compete in the x86 market, VIA will become one of the most influential Taiwanese companies, if not even one of the most influential IT companies in the world.
Abit
Abit proved once more that it has a PR department that could easily compete with the marketing departments of all other Taiwanese IT companies together. This year they flew some 10-20 journalists from all over the world to Computex/Taipei and rented an entire floor in Taipei’s Sheraton for those guys.
Amonst other things Abit offered a special party and a sight seeing tour for those folks and we would have loved to report from those as well, but all of us were working away day and night, so that we could not attend any of Abit’s kewl events.
At Abit’s booth things were more down to earth and we had a chance to look at their upcoming products:
- KT7 is the name of Abit’s upcoming SocketA motherboard with VIA’s KT133 chipset. Unfortunately Abit is lagging a bit behind the competition with the release of this product, which is why you will have to wait at least until July/August before you can drop your Athlon/Thunderbird or Duron processor in an Abit platform.
- SE6/SL6, Abit’s platforms with Intel’s upcoming 815E and i815 chipset are ready to ship. We’ve already tested the SE6 against Asus’ CUSL2 and will supply you with the results shortly. You can guess which one was superior when you read the article about the final i815/Solano chipset.
- KA7-100 is a beefed up version of Abit’s well performing KA7 SlotA motherboard for AMD Athlon processors. The ‘-100’ stands for an additional onboard ATA100 controller from HighPoint.
- BX-100 is Abit’s latest BX-chipset based solution with onboard ATA100 controller.
- VH6 is a Socket370 Celeron/Pentium III-Coppermine platform with VIA’s Apollo Pro133A chipset.
- VP-20 is Abit’s dual processor platform with VIA’s Apollo Pro 133A chipset.
Showbizz
As this was my fourth Computex I met a lot of people that go there every year. Besides those there were a lot of new attendees, especially from the Internet. Unfortunately I didn’t take enough pictures of all those guys, but I’d still like to mention a few.
Mike Magee from The Register is a real veteran to Computex as to almost any other IT-show on this planet. I have the highest respect for Mike and it’s always fun to share a drink or two (or 5 or 10, …) and some French cigarettes with him.
The other guy I took a picture of was my ex favorite enemy Kyle Bennet from www.hardocp.com. Kyle and I had a very pleasant war for exactly one year and we both decided that this was long enough. So we finally made peace, had a few drinks and decided to look for some other people to bully in the future.
I hope that Kyle won’t get in trouble with his readers now that he announced peace with me.
Going to Computex Without Visiting Hong Kong Is Like Going to Paris Without Seeing the Eiffel Tower
Yes, folks, that needs to be said! Are you one of the guys who went for a plane ride of 12 to 14 hours, went to the show, ate ‘Taiwan made’ Italian food or Hamburgers only and flew back another 12-14 hours without seeing anything besides the show? Congratulations!
Hong Kong is only one and a half hours away from Taipei and it’s one of the most beautiful and exciting cities in the world. I arranged to meet Kate in Hong Kong for the four days before Computex. I was on the trip to Taiwan and she was on the trip back from Australia, which worked out perfectly. We had a lovely time there and feel both sorry for all of you Computex attendees who weren’t even aware where Hong Kong actually is.
Kate and I on the Victoria Peak Platform.
Kate.
The famous skyline of Hong Kong Island with the Bank of China building.
Hong Kong Island, the harbor and Kowloon seen from Victoria Peak.
