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<B>Introduction</B>:
Ahh the always needed intro. This was my first trade show and I wanted to start it off right. Well, it didn't go so well, and I lost the driver cd to my digicam. The show started at 10:00am, but I needed to pick up my press badges before hand. Now, if you know anything of New York, you know you'll have loads of traffic, but I never expected what I got. There was traffic due to an accident ON ANOTHER STREET!! Rubber necking anyone? Anyway, the highlight of the first day was my visit with AMD and I got to meet Jeff from AMDZone!
<B>Theme</B>:
When I got into the floor, there are two things that striked me as the general theme to this years XPO. Wireless and portable computing (Both I will cover in depth tomorrow) were huge. When I went to the keynote from a Microsoft Group VP, Jeff Raikes, I was impressed (yeah really). The topic that he covered was the new tablet PC.
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/tablets.jpg">
This is just a taste of the tablet PC, there were many of them at the show.</center>
<B>Microsoft</B>:
Microsoft's main goals are to double productivity (doubtful), trouble free speach and handwriting recognition (which they have done a great job on), and the Tablet PC will be the wave of the future. He demonstraited a tablet PC running none other than Windows XP Tablet PC edition. By the way, the launch dates for all this stuff is November 7, 2002. One thing you should realize about the some of the tablets that they were showing off, they are also a laptop. Enough of this though, I'll go into more tomorrow.
<B>What else?</B>:
While I was walking around, I saw some cool products that I had to show everyone. The first one being this wireless mouse. What is different about this one compared to the others? You don't need to be on a surface!
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/gyrowireless.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/gyrouse.jpg">
This thing was so cool.</center>
The great thing about this product is that it uses a gyroscope to gather the information about the movements. There is hardly a learning curve to this product as I picked it up and it worked flawlessly. You can also use it as an optical mouse on a surface if you want to. You can learn more about this product at <a href="http://www.gyration.com">Gyration</a>.
I saw another product that really caught my eye. Eizo, which is a name I never really heard of, had some of the best TFT LCD screens I have ever seen. The LCDs produced an image that was too perfect. I was amazed by it.
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/15inch.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/21inch.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/160deg.jpg">
Nice monitors.</center>
The last pic shows the 21 inch at 160 degrees, the picture was still clear as a glass. That was the main problem to me for LCDs, the viewing angle. I saw no apparent viewing angle problem in any of there products. I also saw them displaying this:
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/triple.jpg">
Ahh the glory of triple LCDs.</center>
<B>AMD</B>:
Okay, now to the reason that you probably came here to read. I did meet with AMD today, and yes I got to see the Opteron (Sledgehammer and Clawhammer) in action. Another thing that was of interest was...
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/jeffhamdzone.jpg">
This is Jeff from AMDZone!</center>
Anyway, I was briefed on the clawhammer and opteron mostly, but I knew more than they thought I think. Here is a list of the points that I took down.
Clawhammer will be named the Athlon, but will have a suffix (like XP)
Barton will be coming out and will have 512K Bus speed wasn't specified but I'm sure it'll be 166Mhz.
Richard Heye says its 'Wicked fast'
AMD predicts by the end of 2003, 50% will be 64-bit and by end of 2004, near 100%.
The Clawhammer will be coming out in December of 2002.
There is no DDR-2 support yet, but they assured me that they will support new technology as they see fit.
nVidia, SiS, Ali, VIA all have chipsets coming for the Hammer.
The Tbred will go up to 2600+ and then Barton will take over and go maybe until 2800+, AMD wants to cater to Socket A still.
The Clawhammer will debut at greater than 3000+, but the clock speed is undetermined and yes the samples were running at 800mhz.
And now some pics.
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd1p4p.jpg">
This pic shows an AMD 4 way and a workstation, the 4 way is running a Zeus Webserver and the workstation is pulling stuff off the server</center>
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd1p2p.jpg">
Here is a pic of a 2 way and a workstation, running .NET and XP respectively, the workstation is pulling a powerpoint presentation of of the server.</center>
Think I'm joking?
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd1p.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd2p.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd4p.jpg">
</center>
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amdmistery2p.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amdmistery4p.jpg">
And lastly here are the mistery boxes that contain the miracle processors.</center>
<B>Wrap up</B>:
That's a quick fix for day 1, I am really tired from waking up at 6 am and from all the traffic. I promise I'll get some good stuff tomorrow. Good night everyone!
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?articleid=27">Day 2 coverage is up with Tablet PCs and Serial ATA</a>.
<B>Introduction</B>:
Ahh the always needed intro. This was my first trade show and I wanted to start it off right. Well, it didn't go so well, and I lost the driver cd to my digicam. The show started at 10:00am, but I needed to pick up my press badges before hand. Now, if you know anything of New York, you know you'll have loads of traffic, but I never expected what I got. There was traffic due to an accident ON ANOTHER STREET!! Rubber necking anyone? Anyway, the highlight of the first day was my visit with AMD and I got to meet Jeff from AMDZone!
<B>Theme</B>:
When I got into the floor, there are two things that striked me as the general theme to this years XPO. Wireless and portable computing (Both I will cover in depth tomorrow) were huge. When I went to the keynote from a Microsoft Group VP, Jeff Raikes, I was impressed (yeah really). The topic that he covered was the new tablet PC.
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/tablets.jpg">
This is just a taste of the tablet PC, there were many of them at the show.</center>
<B>Microsoft</B>:
Microsoft's main goals are to double productivity (doubtful), trouble free speach and handwriting recognition (which they have done a great job on), and the Tablet PC will be the wave of the future. He demonstraited a tablet PC running none other than Windows XP Tablet PC edition. By the way, the launch dates for all this stuff is November 7, 2002. One thing you should realize about the some of the tablets that they were showing off, they are also a laptop. Enough of this though, I'll go into more tomorrow.
<B>What else?</B>:
While I was walking around, I saw some cool products that I had to show everyone. The first one being this wireless mouse. What is different about this one compared to the others? You don't need to be on a surface!
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/gyrowireless.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/gyrouse.jpg">
This thing was so cool.</center>
The great thing about this product is that it uses a gyroscope to gather the information about the movements. There is hardly a learning curve to this product as I picked it up and it worked flawlessly. You can also use it as an optical mouse on a surface if you want to. You can learn more about this product at <a href="http://www.gyration.com">Gyration</a>.
I saw another product that really caught my eye. Eizo, which is a name I never really heard of, had some of the best TFT LCD screens I have ever seen. The LCDs produced an image that was too perfect. I was amazed by it.
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/15inch.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/21inch.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/160deg.jpg">
Nice monitors.</center>
The last pic shows the 21 inch at 160 degrees, the picture was still clear as a glass. That was the main problem to me for LCDs, the viewing angle. I saw no apparent viewing angle problem in any of there products. I also saw them displaying this:
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/triple.jpg">
Ahh the glory of triple LCDs.</center>
<B>AMD</B>:
Okay, now to the reason that you probably came here to read. I did meet with AMD today, and yes I got to see the Opteron (Sledgehammer and Clawhammer) in action. Another thing that was of interest was...
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/jeffhamdzone.jpg">
This is Jeff from AMDZone!</center>
Anyway, I was briefed on the clawhammer and opteron mostly, but I knew more than they thought I think. Here is a list of the points that I took down.
Clawhammer will be named the Athlon, but will have a suffix (like XP)
Barton will be coming out and will have 512K Bus speed wasn't specified but I'm sure it'll be 166Mhz.
Richard Heye says its 'Wicked fast'
AMD predicts by the end of 2003, 50% will be 64-bit and by end of 2004, near 100%.
The Clawhammer will be coming out in December of 2002.
There is no DDR-2 support yet, but they assured me that they will support new technology as they see fit.
nVidia, SiS, Ali, VIA all have chipsets coming for the Hammer.
The Tbred will go up to 2600+ and then Barton will take over and go maybe until 2800+, AMD wants to cater to Socket A still.
The Clawhammer will debut at greater than 3000+, but the clock speed is undetermined and yes the samples were running at 800mhz.
And now some pics.
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd1p4p.jpg">
This pic shows an AMD 4 way and a workstation, the 4 way is running a Zeus Webserver and the workstation is pulling stuff off the server</center>
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd1p2p.jpg">
Here is a pic of a 2 way and a workstation, running .NET and XP respectively, the workstation is pulling a powerpoint presentation of of the server.</center>
Think I'm joking?
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd1p.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd2p.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amd4p.jpg">
</center>
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amdmistery2p.jpg"> <img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/june02/pcexpo1/amdmistery4p.jpg">
And lastly here are the mistery boxes that contain the miracle processors.</center>
<B>Wrap up</B>:
That's a quick fix for day 1, I am really tired from waking up at 6 am and from all the traffic. I promise I'll get some good stuff tomorrow
. Good night everyone!<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?articleid=27">Day 2 coverage is up with Tablet PCs and Serial ATA</a>.