Like many other IT journalists, I started arranging my schedule for CeBIT 2007, which will take place from March 15th to 21st (with some pre-show events on the 14th) in Hannover, Germany. Although CeBIT is currently facing a minor scale down along with a little bit more business orientation in the coming years, it's still the largest IT trade show and as such of significant importance for IT journalists.

Usually I go through a list of companies I'd like to meet and talk to at the show, starting with the most important. NVIDIA, being among those, informed me, that they won't be present at this year’s CeBIT exhibition. When I phoned a PR representative about CeBIT, I found out that NVIDIA will not have a booth on the exhibition grounds, will not hold a press conference, will not host a party (NVIDIAs parties at CeBIT are well-known) and will not even have representatives available for the press.

They actually do have two people - Luciano Alibrandi and Jens Neuschaefer - sneaking around at the show, but unless you are a board partner, you will not have any chance to talk to them (the exception might be high ranked online and printed media). The reason for this sounds quite simple, yet it leaves some food for thought. I was told NVIDIA has no new products to exhibit, thus there is no reason to have a booth at CeBIT. I then asked, what's up with GeForce 8600 and the reply was, "you can assume it will launch after CeBIT." Looking at some unofficial info, it's a pretty safe bet to watch for it in the April timeframe, and that kind of confirms it.

So NVIDIA has no new video cards, chipsets and associated software (their drivers should receive some updates in the near future) to show at CeBIT. With AMDs socket AM2+ platform due out in the middle of the year it might be a tad too early for new chipsets, though in my opinion it's about time to find out more about them. AMDs recent delay of R600 surely gives NVIDIA some room to fix their DirectX 10 drivers and release further G80 products for more affordable price-segments. I will watch out at the booths of NVIDIA partners, if they have some novelties in store that NVIDIA doesn't like to talk about.

As a side note I'd like to add that ATI had no booth at CeBIT last year, though they had a meeting room with representatives available for the press.  NVIDIA had no booth at CES either, only meeting rooms for selected partners.