Intel project
athena featureS
To release a laptop as part of Project
Athena, manufacturers will have to
meet certain specifications, and this is
what Intel has revealed so far....
5G connectivity: One of the biggest
features of Project Athena will be 5G
connectivity. This means that every
Project Athena laptop will come with
the ability to connect to 5G cellular
networks (via a SIM card).
Longer battery life: Improving
the battery life of laptops has been a
constant struggle for manufacturers.
With laptops getting ever thinner, the
space to add batteries shrinks as well.
Project Athena aims to drastically
improve the battery life of laptops,
with times between charges of around
nine hours, which is a lot longer than
modern Intel-based laptops. However,
Snapdragon-based laptops have seen
battery-life figures of beyond 24 hours.
Instant-on: Smartphones and
tablets have spoiled us when it comes
to devices that power up almost
instantly, and Project Athena aims to
bring that to Windows-based laptops
and Chromebooks with Intel hardwareinside. Again, Windows on ARM devices
already manage this, and they also
remain connected when in sleep
mode, so emails can continue to be
downloaded, for example, which means
that when you open up the laptop, your
emails are already there. We hope—
and expect—Project Athena will offer
similar functionality.
Intel hardware: We also expect
Intel to set minimum hardware
specifications, such as including SSD
storage and support for Wi-Fi 6, the
latest wireless networking technology.
Price-wise, we expect Intel Project
Athena laptops to be pitched at the
higher end of the market—much like
when it created the Ultrabook category
of laptops. However, Intel has talked
about how Project Athena will cover
a range of laptop types—and that
Athena laptops will run Windows 10
and Chrome OS. Coupled with the fact
that Google is one of the Project Athena
partners, it looks like we’ll be getting
Project Athena Chromebooks—which
means there’s a good chance we’ll see
affordable Athena laptops as well.announced the Snapdragon 8cx, which
will be the first chip it’s produced that
is designed specifically for laptops and
computers. Without the constraint of it
being a smartphone chip retrofitted for
laptops, the 8cx has the potential to really
make non-x86 laptops mainstream.
Qualcomm also beat AMD and Intel
to the punch, because the 8cx contains
the first 7nm processor for laptops
and Windows devices: the Kryo 495.
Meanwhile, Intel is still working on its
10nm architecture.
That’s a pretty big PR blow Qualcomm
has landed on its competitors, but not only
does the smaller architecture look good
on paper, but it should bring some real
performance benefits as well.
It’s based on ARM’s big.LITTLE
compute system, which combines
slower processor cores with faster
and more power-hungry cores, and
switches between them, depending on
the workload, to help maximize battery
life without impacting performance, and
will support up to 16GB of DDR4 memory,
NVme SSDs, and Gen 2 USB-C 3.1.
For owners of Intel-powered laptops,
that kind of feature list might simplyelicit a small shrug—after all, x86
laptops have had those features for a
while now. However, it’s another step
toward Snapdragon and other ARM-
powered laptops challenging the current
dominance of Intel-based hardware.
The 8cx’s Adreno 680 graphics card
also offers a decent leap in performance—
including DirectX 12 support—so we couldSnapdragon-powered laptops have SIM card trays for mobile connectivity.even see Snapdragon laptops that are
capable of a little light gaming as well. It
can also apparently power two connected
4K HDR monitors, too.
However, arguably the Snapdragon
8cx’s most important feature is its
support for 5G mobile Internet. The
speeds and low latency afforded by the
emerging cellular data technology could
have huge implications for how we use
our computers. For instance, it could
mean that we would be able to use our 5G
laptops to stream games from services
such as Nvidia GeForce Now or Google’s
upcoming Stadia service—so the lack of a
powerful GPU wouldn’t even be an issue.
The idea that Snapdragon 8cx-powered
laptops could become lightweight gaming
machines that can play games at full
graphical settings—and also have battery
lives of over 20 hours—is an incredibly
exciting one.
At Computex 2019, Qualcomm and
Lenovo announced that they were working
on “Project Limitless,” which will be the
first ever 5G laptop—and it will run on
the Snapdragon 8cx platform.
According to Johnson Jia, senior
vice president of Lenovo’s PC Business
Group, “Lenovo 5G PCs built on the
Snapdragon 8cx 5G compute platform
will feature ultra-low latency, remarkable
performance, battery life, and 5G
connectivity that will revolutionize the way
we work and play.”
That’s a big promise, and while we don’t
know much more about Lenovo’s Project
Limitless, we should hopefully find out
more later this year.IS The TIde TurnIng?
What the latest Snapdragon platform
(and the future 8cx) demonstrates is that
ARM-based laptops are finally viable
propositions. They are no longer over-non-x86 Windows
48 MAXIMUMPC aug 2019 maximumpc.com