Gadgetory

we started this whole video series that you're watching out by asking a seemingly simple question what's a computer and I'm kind of obsessed with that question or more specifically with how pcs are changing we know that Microsoft has a surface and Apple has the iPad and the Mac and Google has Chromebooks but that leaves out one really important company Intel so here's a question what does Intel think the future of pcs looks like to answer that question I went to Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara California we went inside the room that Intel calls the client experience center which is a boring name for actually a not a very boring place it's where Intel works on prototypes for entirely new kinds of computers this is Murli veeramani a senior director here at intel veeramani is one of the people in charge of making stuff like what you see spread out on this table so at this table we're looking at the looks like almost the whole development process and microcosm for Tiger Rapids this is the tiger Rapids prototype you might have seen it before Intel's actually been showing it off for a few months now it has an LCD screen on one side and an ePaper display on the other where a keyboard would usually go you've had the idea and then you start moving on to actually like 3d printing stuff and building or identity so then comes the electronics of it which is you know how does this all of this fit into the form factor that we have so we do different kind of motherboards and here's an example of an earlier motherboard we did it's a whole computer the whole laptop is this nice so yeah until makes computers sort of Intel has to do more than just come up with the idea it actually has to build it to prove out that it's even possible until goes 90% of the way towards creating a finished product it builds the board's checks the thermals and even develops a little bit of the software on Windows but you can't go into a store and buy an Intel computer they don't sell stuff but you will be able to do is go into a store later this year and buy the Lenovo yoga book see 9:30 which is sort of like a bigger version of this prototype device you can see that the two things here are basic the same idea once I'd Snell city panel and the other size an ePaper display we work very closely with Lenovo to get their product to market using our learnings and our engineering collaterals rather engineer to the things they want and then they say okay that's pretty good let us now do it our way you kind of give them like a blueprint and then they modify it to their own needs we just have to work with them and realize it's their product right right and make sure that we can satisfy our eventual requirements which is our silicon you have done a huge amount of work to even get to this point how does it know how does it feel I guess to basically be making nearly consumer ready products and then not finishing that last mile what's that like for you so it's it's a it's a tough thing and I tell my team the analogy I give is it's like you're not bringing up your kids we wanted to grow want them to have a successful life but we don't get to live their life right so it's the same thing like us we don't get to put our product because that's not our business cool so hang on we got a stop here because there's a thing that we haven't really talked about yet intel has had a garbage year it started with specter and meltdown which were two huge security vulnerabilities that required everybody to slow down their chips and then Intel CEO resigned in July after disclosing and improper relationship with an employee and as of right now it still only has an interim CEO and the other thing to say is that for a long while now Intel husband facing kind of a downturn in its core business so it spent the past couple of years trying some really weird stuff we went behind the scenes at CES this year we saw drones and voxels and self-driving cars and back in January we also went to Intel's office to see some normal-looking AR glasses that they called Avant and that project got cancelled because Intel couldn't figure out how to get it from prototype to product so you know yeah garbage year not great all of which means that right now I think Intel is trying to refocus on the PC and specifically on what the PC is turning into my grand theory of Intel is PCs are great smartphones came along and that but then you you hit ultrabooks and that was a really big moment and then there's much weird stuff that you made glasses and bowls that charged things and you're making drones and all that stuff but it feels like it's time for the next generation of pcs to happen again it's fair to say we do experiment with things but I would say the magic that we have in our engineering capability when married to our customers Rogerian capability is we bring practical innovations okay that can change or allow people to use computers in new ways but also if we scale into the market now Intel's real goal with making all these prototypes is to create something that's actually possible for an OEM to make and it will actually get sold on the market now Tiger Rapids was one thing but the next thing is this a dual screen device called copper Harbor it's a cool prototype but it's also really prototyping the software is more proof of concept than actual and usable thing in copper Harbor the whole idea is to have two symmetrical screens of similar capabilities coming together and that opens up a completely new landscape okay two screens but if I want to use it as one big screen like it's just like a tablet I could open up Excel here Excel pops up and voila we have got 46 rows one of their demos you showed me was PowerPoint you have the speaker notes on one side and you're presenting on the other side so you could be presenting this to me so this is showing the use case of having you know attack a Rapids like but much more powerful because this whole site is color why is this better than just having a big old tablet with two windows open the whole idea is that it can fold it can be a portable device kind of multiple modes like for example you couldn't do the tenth mode on a tablet of course the tablet has its own capability that you know until we get screens which kind of spans or so you know there are benefits of the tablet as well and I guess the other thing it's not only does it fold up smaller to carry but it could also fold this way so that you've got a nicer reading experience or something yeah yeah whether we actually see this dual screen thing turn into an actual product is still an open question but if you want to know what Intel thinks the future of PCs looks like it looks a little bit like this we have driven the thickness of PCs to single millimeter thicknesses I mean it's super thin what's going to happen is as you carry your thin machine around you're gonna be able to use it more and more and more to do the things you want you'll have the different surfaces you'll have amazing screen technology to do not only screens and keyboards but you can imagine other things you could do on the second screen after everything that I saw it Intel here's what I think it's idea of what's next for the PC actually is that they're gonna look and act a little bit more like phones there's gonna be more willing to carry them around with you wherever you go Intel it missed out on the first 10 years of smart phones so now it has to be hyper focused on what it's good at to make sure that it doesn't miss out on the next interesting thing and you know what that might be computers everybody thanks so much for watching and let me know would you ease the device it has a screen here I'm gonna screen here and then it folds and folds the other way let me know in the comments and if you want to know how to actually use all the weird technology we keep talking about we've got a great YouTube series called workflow and you should check that out too