Intel Announces Project Athena Open Labs To Test Next-Gen Laptops (tomshardware.com) 47
Intel announced today that it is opening new Project Athena Open Labs in Taipei, Shanghai, and Folsom California, to test and certify the new Athena designs that will come to market in 2020. From a report: Intel announced Project Athena, a new initiative designed to user in the next wave of powerful laptops, at CES 2019. The program is reminiscent of Intel's Ultrabook initiative that pushed the transition to thin-and-light designs, but Athena focuses on increasing performance and responsiveness within the form factors we're accustomed to, meaning the company isn't pushing for thinner devices. Athena-based designs will also deliver up to 20 hours of battery life, near-instant resumption from sleep states (the laptop will pop to life immediately when you open the lid), 5G connectivity, and AI technologies to improve productivity. These new devices will come to market from laptop OEMs, but Intel will co-develop and certify the products.
It's easy to see this push for what it is: a new class of laptops to address the rise of Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Always Connected PCs (ACPCs), but that should help usher in a new wave of innovation. Intel says the first fruits of this program will come to market in the latter half of 2019, so we expect to see new designs debut at Computex later this month. Some of the first products will come wielding Intel's 10nm Ice Lake processors, but Intel also plans to support new Athena-based designs with its Y- and U-series processors.
It's easy to see this push for what it is: a new class of laptops to address the rise of Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Always Connected PCs (ACPCs), but that should help usher in a new wave of innovation. Intel says the first fruits of this program will come to market in the latter half of 2019, so we expect to see new designs debut at Computex later this month. Some of the first products will come wielding Intel's 10nm Ice Lake processors, but Intel also plans to support new Athena-based designs with its Y- and U-series processors.
To bad most software is now in the cloud. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is getting to the point on why bother getting a powerful device when all the software you need to use is cloud based. We just need fast bandwidth and enough power to stream full screen video, in near real time.
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Those who do not have such fast internet connections, are not running the newest versions of the most popular software.
And the software that can work without fast internet connections, probably will not work well on such modern systems.
Re: To bad most software is now in the cloud. (Score:2)
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Those who do not have such fast internet connections, are not running the newest versions of the most popular software. And the software that can work without fast internet connections, probably will not work well on such modern systems.
If, by "most popular", you mean "Photoshop", then yes, you can't run the latest version of the programs without a fast internet connection.
On my laptop, I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 for development of computer and microcontroller software/firmware. I'm using Eclipse with gcc, and I use Libreoffice 6.x as an office suite. I'm also using CubeMX from STMicro for code development. I don't always use the latest version, but that's for project management reasons, not because I can't.
I also use a Windows VM, where I
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Those who do not have such fast internet connections, are not running the newest versions of the most popular software. And the software that can work without fast internet connections, probably will not work well on such modern systems.
Name one.
Re: To bad most software is now in the cloud. (Score:2)
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It is getting to the point on why bother getting a powerful device when all the software you need to use is cloud based. We just need fast bandwidth and enough power to stream full screen video, in near real time.
What are you even talking about? There is an old argument to be made a lot of people use computers to browse the web and email and for this subset of users providing them with more capabilities isn't helpful.
There is also confusion about software being artificially tethered to the vendor as "cloud based" when it is really the end user being treated as a string puppet.
Yet this idea "cloud" is taking over local processing is foreign to me. I literally have no idea what you are even referring to. People ha
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"Certified by Intel" (Score:1)
"Trust us, again... what's the worst that could happen?"
Re:"Certified by Intel" (Score:5, Funny)
Intel has a track record of 99.99999999% of getting it right.
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Even if you count only functioning _enabled_ transistors on a binned chip I think you are far to optimistic.
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Re: "Certified by Intel" (Score:2)
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Well what is the worst that can happen? The last bad thing that happened was the FDIV bug. Since then there's been nothing that has impacted any laptop user.
Re: "Certified by Intel" (Score:2)
The last bad thing that happened was the FDIV bug
Netburst was a bit more recent than that.
Stupid PR move (Score:4, Funny)
The move that ushered in the Ultrabooks was one to change form factor. Instead here we have no change, just the same incremental improvement Intel should be delivering anyway.
So to cut through the PR bullshit: "Intel Announces Project Athena, a distraction from the fact that they aren't improving speed or battery life though announcing they intend to improve speed and battery life".
What dumb corporate speak
Re: Stupid PR move (Score:2)
The move that ushered in the Ultrabooks was one to change form factor. Instead here we have no change, just the same incremental improvement
Yeah but now they've got Kyle the Aging Dallas Fratboy (of HardOCP fame) so it's all good.
Reuse, Forget, Recycle (Score:3)
Pfft. Intel is so far behind ...
I ran products developed in Project Athena [wikipedia.org] on systems with Iris [wikipedia.org] graphics back in the 1990s already.
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Pfft. Misagon is so far behind...
I played the Athena video game [wikipedia.org] back in 1986.
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That may be true... but the game wasn't called ``Project Athena''.
"Comes on instantly" (Score:2)
Project Athena? (Score:3)
Will they come with X servers?
could they not have selected an original name? (Score:2)
You might think they could have come up with a better name, not re-use a successful project name from the 80s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]