Intel shows the future of notebooks including folding screens, Tiger Lake CPU and DG1 GPU

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Intel Shows The Future Of Notebooks Including Folding Screens, Tiger
Intel Shows The Future Of Notebooks Including Folding Screens, Tiger

Intel anticipates what will be its architectural innovations for the year 2020 in the world of mobile systems:

Project Athena is the key through which notebooks will become more and more performing and brilliant but in the future, the new Core CPUs of the Tiger Lake family will find space beyond to the first discrete GPU, the DG1 model

Intel also chooses to focus its attention on the world of PCs and the innovation that characterizes it at CES 2020. On the occasion of its keynote, which anticipates the official opening of the fair by a few hours and follows few of the specular conference held by AMD, Intel focuses on the world of laptops by talking about some of the new generation hardware components that we will see at the debut in 2020 and anticipating what will be the future development directions in the world of notebooks.

Exactly 1 year ago at CES in Las Vegas, Intel introduced Project Athena, the initiative that aims to develop notebooks that are able to offer an increasingly complete user experience for consumers. Project Athena notebooks aim to offer an autonomy of operation with a very high battery when used with typical personal productivity applications, ensure prompt response to commands, offer instant system start-up, always guarantee connectivity at maximum speed. by combining form factors that are innovative and meet the specific needs of users. During 2019, about 20 Project Athena certified systems were made available on the market, most of which based on thin form factors and equipped with 10th generation Intel Core CPUs based on 10-nanometer production technology.

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Intel’s forecasts are to offer about 50 new Project Athena certified systems on the market during 2020, which will also be joined by the first Chromebook systems of this type. Intel has in fact announced a partnership with Google which envisages the inclusion of notebook systems based on OS Chrome within the Project Athena program, with the aim of ensuring the standards reached with the first Project Athena certified notebooks also for this type of product. which were launched on the market during 2019. The Chromebook system is a very rich market in North America and in some global regions, which has not yet achieved success in other countries such as Italy.

The initiative also looks to the future of notebook systems, made increasingly of flexible screens: here is the announcement of new Project Athena specifications specifically dedicated to dual-screen systems, which also include systems with a flexible screen such as the model Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold announced at CES together with Intel’s reference system referred to as the Horseshoe Bend name. It is a particular notebook with a flexible screen with a diagonal of 17 inches, which can be adapted to different modes of use depending on how the screen is positioned.

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During the keynote, Intel showed various notebook systems of different versions focused on flexible screens or on the presence of multiple screens. The future direction of the sector is evident, pushing towards form factors that place the screen more and more at the centre of the experience of using laptop PCs, also taking advantage of the innovations in terms of flexible screens. In perspective, we will no longer see notebooks as we have been used to knowing them, following an evolution that was born several years ago first with Ultrabook solutions and then with the different proposals attributable to the 2-in-1 category. The classic clamshells we believe will continue to be offered but more and more users will turn to innovative form factors, of which Intel wants to promote itself thanks to its Project Athena program.

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The press conference was also an occasion for Intel to announce the CPUs of the Tiger Lake family, a code name that distinguishes the next generation of Core processors for notebook systems. Of these CPUs, we know that the production technology adopted for their construction will be 10 nanometers and that they will integrate GPU component based on the new Intel Xe Graphics architecture. Intel indicated, during the keynote, that the CPU component will see Tiger Lake increase double-digit performance (more than 10%) compared to Ice Lake currently on the market. The integration of Thunderbolt 4 connectivity will allow achieving 4 times higher throughput than that of the USB 3.0 interface, while as regards artificial intelligence processing, new architectural components will allow to obtain a clear leap forward in terms of performance.

Tiger Lake Intel has shown both the SoC and a compact motherboard, used within ultra-thin reference systems that represent the reference for the development of notebooks and 2-in-1 systems that Intel and its partners will make available starting since 2020. It is evident that the miniaturization of these components will allow notebook system manufacturers to develop designs that are also different from those currently on the market, offering more space for the battery or allowing to integrate everything in more compact chassis. All this is linked to what was previously discussed, with the Project Athena initiative which is the meeting point between the evolution of hardware components developed by Intel and that in terms of display and form factor.

Last news, but certainly not less important than the others, of the Intel keynote at CES 2020 is the first demonstration of the discrete GPU for client systems of the Xe Graphics family. DG1, this is the name of Intel’s first discrete GPU, has been shown in a declination intended for notebook systems. No technical details have emerged about the characteristics of this GPU but Intel has confirmed its official launch during 2020: it is presumable that this will happen, in the ecosystem of mobile systems, in combination with the processors of the Tiger Lake family.

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This will be the first weapon with which Intel will try to contrast AMD and NVIDIA in the sector of dedicated video cards, both in the notebook and desktop sectors, but we do not expect a top-of-the-range proposal for the most passionate gamers. DG1, according to the rumours currently available, will be a GPU destined for the segment of entry into the market of dedicated video cards: it is, therefore, no surprise that Intel has performed the first public demonstration in combination with an ultra-thin notebook, to indicate which is the target audience for which it proposes this new video architecture.