Back in January, Intel announced Project Athena as a way of defining the next generation of advanced laptops. Now the chip company is preparing to open the labs required to test and approve components for use in Project Athena-certified laptops.
We're expecting the first Project Athena laptops in the second half of 2019, but the project will really kick off in 2020. Intel intends to produce a spec each year that defines what a Project Athena-certified laptop should be. The key features include never having to wait for your laptop to be ready to use, battery life that doesn't require a charger during the day, instant connectivity including to a 5G network, the ability to change form factor as and when required, and first-class support for artificial intelligence systems such as voice assistants.
Combining the performance required to instantly be available to the user with all-day battery life requires some serious low-power optimizations across all components found in a laptop. This is where the Project Athena Open Labs come in. Three of them are being setup at locations in Taipei, Shanghai, and California where teams of Intel engineers will be employed to test components for approval.
Independent hardware vendors (IHV) will submit their components for assessment by Intel at the Open Labs. Intel will then feedback to the IHV recommended optimization solutions if required which can then be implemented. Once Intel is happy, a component can join the Project Athena low power component list which OEMs then have access to for selection from when building their Athena-certified laptops.
The Open Labs are sure to be busy with Acer, Asus, Dell, Google, HP, Innolux, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sharp all signed up as innovation partners. Being branded a Project Athena laptop is sure to be important, which puts pressure on the IHVs to get their components approved quickly.
For consumers, this can only be viewed as a positive. The laptops we'll be buying in 2020 will be much more efficient, with guaranteed connectivity and all day battery life hopefully well-beyond what we see today.