Project Athena - Reinventing a Laptop

Over the past decade, Intel has done a lot for mobile computing. It can be said that it was one of the main vectors of its activities - increasing the specific energy efficiency of processors, improving wired and wireless interfaces, and much more. Here you can also recall, say, about ultrabooks - the complex embodiment of mobility from the point of view of Intel. But now this incarnation has a new name - Project Athena. The laptop, re-invented.

So, Project Athena is a new standard for high-end laptops, announced this week at Computex. Ultrabook analogies do come to mind right away, but Athena is a bit more. How exactly?

Firstly, Athena is a standardized set of specifications that a laptop must meet to use such a label. Specifications describe performance, connectivity, AI capabilities, battery life, sleep functionality, form factor, and so on. In addition, technical characteristics are set fairly rigidly, for example:
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• getting out of sleep - no more than 1 sec,
• video playback time - at least 9 hours
• fast charging time - no more than 30 minutes
• and so on.

Secondly, Athena is a consortium of companies , which, apart from Intel, includes leading players in the computer market: Microsoft, HP, Dell, Google, Lenovo, Samsung, Xiaomi, and so on - in total more than 100 participants united to create flexible and convenient in the use of smart devices. At the Intel presentation, the first Athena-compatible notebook model, the Lenovo S940, was shown at Computex. The massive sales of Project Athena are planned for the end of this year.

Finally, thirdly, Project Athena is a network of laboratories that Intel is going to open around the world, which distinguishes this project from previous attempts to build mobile ecosystems. In these laboratories, OEM laptop manufacturers and independent vendors will be able to test their products, identify their weak points in terms of functionality, performance and energy efficiency and receive recommendations for improvement from Intel engineers. Initially, in 2020, it is planned to open 3 Project Athena laboratories: in Taipei, Taiwan, Shanghai, China, and Folsom, California, USA.



We, consumers, in principle, no matter what label is pasted on the laptop. But we know that both the functional and the characteristics tend to descend from the top to the bottom of the model range. If Project Athena contributes to the improvement of the top models, after a while we will feel it throughout the entire line. Against which, probably, no one objects.