MXM@CEBIT2007

1. The trip

5 am, Monday morning. This should be the time where you turn around one last time, happy that you still have an hour or maybe two of sleep ahead of you. In fact, it was the time that I shut the door of my car, ready for a 450km drive to the CEBIT fair in Hannover. ETA: between 10 and 11am.

Allow me to give you a little piece of advice. If you set out on a trip, do not take maps with you for 95% of the trip. Do not assume that those measly 5% can't possible screw up things for you. Because in that case, a 15 minute part of your trip can end up taking over an hour. First there's doubt. You turn back once, change your mind and turn back again. Then, at some point you come across a sign that points to a city that is on your map. Happiness ensues and you go for it. Only to find that it leads you to Venlo over secondary roads. Happy that you're at least going in the right direction you continue. And in the end you'll notice you lost over an hour over nothing.

Anyway, many of you will know that large parts of the German highways do not have a speed limit. Unfortunately, those stretches of pure joy are take turns with roadworks and " Staues". While this may sound like something tasty, it's just another way to say you're in a traffic jam. And the roadworks scare me more than Chucky, Jason and Poltergeist combined. The below picture shows the reduced width of the track on a place where I was not too busy with clinching my cheeks. So, there were parts where there was much less room than here..

But ultimately, Germany is a place where you can fall in love with your car all over again. To rediscover the feelings you had when you first had her, the feeling that fades in just being happy to have something to take you from A to B. That is because German highways are pieces of art. They are designed for speed. They are in perfect shape and all curves are laid down so you can safely take them at any desired speed. There are virtually no vehicles that drive slow, you won't find anyone going slower than 130km/h on the middle lane and on the left lane 160km/h seems to be the average speed. In this case, "average" means that when you are doing 180km/h you are likely to be overtaken by large Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's and Porches. Fast. But I was talking about rediscovering your car. The pure joy of driving her at her top speed and noticing she is still as kind and willing as at lesser speeds. Nothing shaking, nothing rambling, not a single second where you don't feel at ease. The Boss and The Scabs as company. I could have driven for days, but I arrived at the Fair around 11.30am..

First sight aaand.. Lunch!

Here's the thing: this place is enormous. I walked for over 6 hours with little to no rest (except for my "lunch") and I was only able to see most of the electronics part of the fair, accounting for maybe 1/3 of the total surface. As much fun as it is, the joy for finding my refound love waiting for me at the end of my long "walk" was considerable. It's comfy chair, soothing music,... Driving away from the fairground reveals an excellent example of German grundlichheid. The Hannover fair has it's own piece of 2x2 highway. In the evening, it turns into a 4x highway to take the countless visitors to the actual highway system, resulting in almost no traffic jam so you can start the final part of the day: driving at night. Maybe even more fun than by daylight. You get the feeling that you're "cocooned-in", just you, the car and the road...

My cocoon

I came home little after 11am, pretty much broken and exhausted. But happy, and with a bunch of MXM info..

2. State of MXM

MXM has always been a bit of a mixed bag. Some good, some bad and some "what the hell?" Some ODM's are leaving the scene, some are increasing their presence and some... erh...

Bottom line: MXM will be supported on DX10.

3. Uniwill/ECS

Had a nice talk to a member of the notebook engineering team over at the ECS boot. There were far less notebooks on display as last year, but the nice gentleman seemed to know what he was talking about. When I asked him about the MXM plans of ECS, he told me ECS would abandon the goldfinger approach of MXM and go with a mezzanine approach from Santa Rosa platforms on. He quoted bad experiences due to bad connections. I must admit that I have a problem with this. System RAM has been on goldfinger cards for ages and I can't remember anyone ever saying something about problems. Knowing that Uniwill was acquired by ECS, I asked him if he knew anything about Uniwill plans. To my surprise he revealed to me that he was actually a part of the Uniwill notebook team and that this team would do most of ECS's notebook designs.

While he insisted to call their "new" card an evolution of the MXM concept, it's hard to see what would make a card MXM if not the connector. Bottom line: the next FSC Amilo series and Alienware m5xxx series will no longer feature 'real' MXM while they were actually the best known and easiest to upgrade MXM notebooks on the market.

4. MSI

MSI seems to be fully confident in the MXM concept, introducing 4 new MXM notebooks. The leaflet says " nVidia 3D chipset" or " ATi 3D chipset". You don't have to be a genius to figure out what they mean. On display: 2 mystery MXM cards, one Type I, another Type II. Again, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's behind the nVidia label. Not on display, but planned: a Type III. It would seem MSI would like to take Uniwill's place on the MXM market. Go MSI!

Guess what's behind the sticker?

Gaming beast with MXM inside!

5.Albatron

Albatron had 2 distinct MXM 7600 Type II modules on display. They would seem to be dipping the MXM end user market a bit. I'm not sure if they will jump in the end, though. MXM for end users is a highly specialized niche market that requires an enormous amount of support and is rarely a simple plug and play affair. What is more interesting is that they did not rip these cards out of thin air. They are actually making them for a large ODM, one that I never knew of that it uses MXM. I am not allowed to disclose the name but I must say it left me miffed a bit. And the best was yet to come.

It's hard to describe the feeling when one of those guys goes backstage to show you something that is not supposed to be shown to the public. Again, I'm not allowed to discuss this, but enjoy the picture nonetheless!

6. Vestel

Veswha? Seriously, they seem to be big in Turkey. Can't figure out of they are an ODM, OEM or rebadger but they had a few MXM notebooks on display. They looked strangely familiar, but I can't seem to connect the dots. Exact specs are unclear and I must say the lady that rushed to my assistance was very nice but offered little in terms of hard intel. I hope to find out more in the future, so...

Nothing hidden about this...

Is there anyone around here fluent in Turkish?

7. Clevo

I have lost track of how many times I had to explain that Clevo does not use MXM. That they use a mezanine card that has nothing to do with MXM... Only to see they now push " MXM Type IV" I don' know what this is. Neither does my source at nVidia. So what is it then? If I had to guess they just baptized their mezanine cards "Type IV" to make it sound more sexy. They were able to comfirm there is no compatibility between IV and the others. I have absolutely no idea what to make of this..

Clevo displays "Type IV"

Thing is, Clevo produces some damn fine and high performance notebooks, as is evidenced by these pictures. I'd sure love it if they used real MXM..

8. Asus

When I was at Cebit last year, Asus told me they would not be using MXM tech anymore, quoting cost, increased notebook size and general complexity. Up to date, we have seen the A8 entering the market with a flipped MXM connector and the Z84 which sport a full Type III card. The announced C90 is supposedly also 'real' MXM. And they have plans.. After this, they are moving to the 'new' MXM.

Wha?

I hear "MXM 2.0" while nVidia has not released a new spec. Nobody seems to be able to tell me what it is or if we can expect compatibility. I'd sure love to hear more about it. And I would sure love to hear their story next year...

9. Stuff

It has nothing to do with MXM, but funny or interesting nonetheless!

And the price for f**gliest notebook goes to...