LAS VEGAS—As Intel forges ahead with its lengthy and delay-prone project to move to a new method of manufacturing PC processors, it is taking a side trip into reimagining what other parts of the PC will look like.

At CES here on Monday, the silicon giant offered no concrete updates on the progress of its 10-nanometer "Ice Lake" production process for CPUs, but it did show off some intriguing prototypes for 5G infrastructure and ever smaller laptops and tablets, as well as tease some new 9th generation CPUs based on its current 14-nanometer production process.

Intel's Lakefield motherboard prototype is an imaginative look at how 10nm chips could enable a new generation of devices whose computing guts like the CPU and wireless radios take up a much smaller percentage of interior space.

Lakefield is essentially a system on a chip (SoC), but one with a five-core CPU fused with memory, next-generation Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3, among other components that are separate and take up more space in today's laptops and tablets.

The CPU portion of the Lakefield motherboard has a single 10nm high-performance "Sunny Cove" core with four smaller Intel Atom processor-based cores. The entire package is about the size of today's stick PCs, but would likely be far more powerful and power efficient.

Intel expects Lakefield motherboards to be in production by the end of the year.

New 9th Generation Chips, AI, and 5G

In the meantime, the company is adding to its existing lineup of 9th generation CPUs. The new chips, such as the six-core Core i5-9400, have integrated graphics processors and are designed to be used in mainstream consumer desktops. They follow the ultra-high-end 9th generation CPUs like the Core i9-9900K, which was announced last fall.

Intel said it will release laptop versions of the mainstream 9th generation chips in the second quarter of this year. If you're eyeing a new laptop, though, you might want to wait until the 2019 holiday season, when the 10nm "Ice Lake" chips are expected to be available. Dell showed off a 10nm-based XPS laptop on stage at CES, and hinted that it could be available by the end of the year.

More devices—especially smaller ones with very fast wireless capabilities—will necessitate new wireless infrastructure, and Intel is investing in that as well. It is planning to introduce a new 5G base station called "Snow Ridge."

During a demo on stage at CES, a Snow Ridge base station automatically prioritized traffic from a remote surgery application over a virtual reality livestream. Such prioritization is a hallmark of 5G networks, and one that several companies are trying to perfect.