Will this week's Godzilla-sized computer conference in Las Vegas be the last Comdex? Literally speaking, of course, it won't. The show will roll on while founder Sheldon Adelson (who wisely cashed out a few years back) and his fellow moguls overoptimistically sprout ever more opulent casinos and hotel rooms on the Strip.

But I believe this year's Comdex will mark the end of an era. Indeed, the age of Comdex as a "must attend" event is passing. Companies such as Intel and Dell are no longer renting humongous booths to showcase their wares. Keynote speakers like Microsoft's Bill Gates are of necessity more focused on political battles than on PCs. And the charismatic Andy Grove of Intel won't be wowing conference goers-as he did two years ago-with his keen insights on the "battle for consumers' eyeballs" to be fought between television and Internet-connected desktop computers.

Gone too is the buzz of new technologies on the verge of mass-market breakthrough. Last year's big Comdex newcomer, DVD, has taken the market not by storm but by stealth.

This year, we're left with home networking and sound cards as the big items on the radar screen.

Lest I be accused of pessimism, let me add that there is much that's of great import-but it's often being shown in other venues. A case in point is the recent Embedded Systems Conference, in San Jose, Calif., where the cutting-edge technologies that will drive the electronics industry forward were in ample evidence. Battle-hardened kernels, real-time Java implementations (more about that in a future column) and significant advances in digital-signal processing are just a few examples.

Comdex attendees in the know will have to look beyond the show floor to gain insight into the overarching trend: namely, the search for bandwidth. Driving it forward are emerging interconnection technologies that will take network-aware computing to a new plane during the next decade. I'm speaking of distributed software, large-scale multiprocessing, encryption and packet-based multicasting. On the silicon side, highly parallel architectures and copper interconnects are areas to watch.

Indeed, the paradox of Comdex is that there will be less buzz, but it will likely be a better place to pick up on future trends. Nevertheless, like the National Computer Conference that preceded it, Comdex has gotten too big for its own good.

This year, I expect I'll see some interesting systems and hear about a few notable chips. Yet, I may still leave town muttering "C'mon, seven."