DATELINE – Las Vegas, NV.

A secret computer exudes mystery at Comdex.

Tuesday November 17, at 10:00 am Pacific Standard Time, the doors to room S101 in the Las Vegas Convention Center will be promptly closed and locked. Anyone wishing to enter or exit room S101 after that point will need to pass through two sets of security guards and then only those who bear engraved plastic invitations will be allowed through.

It is, by far, the most important meeting not publicly scheduled at this year’s Comdex trade show. While much of the press and thousands of attendees are eavesdropping on a panel entitled “The COMDEX Crystal Ball: COMDEX Meets Wall Street” in the Convention Center’s main auditorium, the thirty or so guests permitted inside room S101 will truly be looking into the future courtesy of a new technology called “Olmecas.”

The result of an unprecedented corporate collaboration between Intel Inc. and the Monterrey, Mex.-based firm of TLA-Matini Ltd., the Olmecas machine represents no less than a startling departure from Intel’s stated long-term development strategy.

Already much of the fanfare around this year’s Comdex has centered on Intel’s consumer-oriented “Aztec", “Tetris", “Castia” and “Beta” series of personal computers, all of which are said to feature the company’s new StrongARM family of processors. Industry analysts have dubbed the cheap and powerful redesigns of the PC “iMac-inspired” and while Intel, itself, will not be manufacturing the prototypes it is rumored that other companies are already developing market-ready versions in the hopes of cashing in on the unprecedented commercial success of Apple’s latest all-in-one.

Indeed, the pivotal moment at this year’s Comdex was supposed to have been the public unveiling of Intel’s new “pyramid scheme” machine and the StrongARM chip. During the last few weeks, both industry and mainstream press have been publishing carefully leaked photographs of the Aztec computer along with barely restrained notes of bullish optimism.

Such brazen boosterism comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following the trade papers of late. Headlines like “Apple Takes A Bite out of PC’s” and “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” make it clear that the heat is on manufacturers of so-called “Windows machines” – computers that use Microsoft’s Windows™ operating system – to compete with a fully resuscitated Apple Inc. It was hoped that “smart home appliances” like the Aztec would open the marketplace even more to computer makers.

“What’s at stake,” says Mel Villa, a journalist for Wired News, “is creating confidence in a new kind of personal computer: a computer that isn’t even called ‘computer’ but nonetheless quietly lives on inside your VCR, your dishwasher, your water heater, etc.” Such a product might be the silver bullet investors have been awaiting in the face of an inevitable recession.

According to Nadja Nhils, a senior partner with Andersen Consulting, “If there is no sharp increase in consumer demand for computer technology over the next few months, high-tech stocks might begin to drop as steadily as traditional holdings.” Nhils believes this depreciation would usher in “the period of rapid inflation, rising unemployment and low economic confidence” her and other financial analysts have been expecting since the first stirrings of the Asian economic crisis.

All of which makes Intel’s decision to keep the Olmecas project shrouded in secrecy all the more puzzling. Villa asks, “Why would Intel, a veritable giant in the computer industry, introduce not one but two new hardware architectures at the same time? It just doesn’t make sense unless there’s something really big inside the Olmecas machine.”

But what is inside the Olmecas box will remain a mystery even after Comdex is over at the end of this week. Given their reticence to date, it is unlikely that the guest list for Tuesday’s closed presentation will be made public until after the convention has ended. There is even little consensus among industry pundits as to what this unexpected arrival could mean for an industry leader set on conquering the domestic market.

In fact, beyond speculative queries about the actual purpose of the Coppermine and Camino micro-chips, there has been scant mention of the Olmecas project in the coverage of Comdex.

“It’s the intrigue that bugs me the most,” says Villa. Pausing for a moment to look through the official Comdex Event Schedule Planner (ESP) he has downloaded onto his laptop, Villa quips, “For all we know, there could be no one inside that room on Tuesday and nothing inside the Olmecas box…and it would still be a boon for the market.”