Intel Athena Open Lab Program to fully optimize laptop components

Intel today announced plans to establish Project Athena open labs in Taipei, Shanghai, and Folsom, California. The program will support vendors in optimizing laptop components for performance and low power, creating advanced laptops that meet the 2020 Project Athena design specifications and target experiences. The three open labs are located in major ecosystem hubs and will be operated by a team of Intel engineers who specialize in system-on-chip (SOC) and platform power optimization. The labs will be operational in June 2019 and will be dedicated to supporting and optimizing laptop components.

 “Across the industry, every company has a role to play in optimizing and enhancing laptops, both now and in the future. The Project Athena Open Lab is a critical step toward enabling broad and close collaboration with the component ecosystem, which will continue to raise the bar for innovation across the platform.”

» Click here to view the full image

Significance: Intel's expanded PC ecosystem integration will help OEMs improve component selection efficiency and enable continuous tuning and testing based on real workloads and usage patterns, significantly accelerating the development process of advanced notebook devices and features.

Why it matters: More than 500 PC ecosystem members gathered in Taiwan this week for the Project Athena Ecosystem Workshop to prepare for the first wave of Project Athena design innovations. Project Athena is Intel’s innovation program announced at CES 2019 to bring new advanced laptops to market. Intel will co-design with ecosystem partners and launch the first Project Athena devices in the second half of this year.

With Project Athena, Intel is fundamentally changing the company’s innovation model. Intel engineers and anthropologists conducted extensive research to gain a deep understanding of how people use devices and the challenges they face. Based on this, they developed a set of predefined key experience requirements to apply next-generation technologies (such as 5G and artificial intelligence) across the entire PC platform to enable new experiences.

From power consumption to responsiveness, every component of a laptop affects the user experience. Supporting component vendors for evaluation, tuning, and compliance testing in open labs will ensure a consistent and optimal technology experience. Early coordination and support at the component level lays a solid foundation for OEM design preparation and implementation to help ensure that systems meet Project Athena experience goals.

Mode of Operation:Project Athena Open Labs is an important first step in getting our first Project Athena designs out for 2020 and beyond. Independent hardware vendors (IHVs) will have the opportunity to have their components evaluated for compliance through Project Athena Open Labs, and Intel OEM partners will be able to nominate their preferred component vendors to participate in the program.

Each open lab is staffed with experienced engineers to test, tune, and provide recommendations to help improve power consumption and performance of various laptop components and peripherals, such as audio, display, embedded controllers, touch, SSDs, and wireless. State-of-the-art facilities are located in regional centers, so ODMs and IHVs can access the labs year-round for component evaluation and solution development, which is consistent with the vision of Project Athena. After evaluation, OEMs will receive a list of optimized components for use throughout the product development cycle.

OEMs, ODMs and IHVs will begin submitting components to the Open Lab in the coming weeks.