AMD's was not the only major keynote today as Intel was also scheduled for a little later at CES 2020. I was not able to watch this keynote, but Intel's associated press release is up now and we can see some of what was presented and discussed on stage. For starters, Intel covered some of its AI achievements such as work with the American Red Cross and its Missing Maps project for better disaster preparedness. With the integrated AI acceleration on 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the company is able to help the American Red Cross build highly accurate maps of bridges and roads in remote regions, which will be vital for emergency responders in the event of a disaster.
Intel also gave a first look and demonstration of its Tiger Lake processors destined for mobile platforms. Built on the company's 10 nm+ process, the Tiger Lake CPUs will feature several optimizations, including for its integrated graphics that are based on the new Intel Xe graphics architecture. Based on the company's testing, it will deliver double-digit performance gains, massive AI performance improvements, and a leap in graphics performance. The USB 3 throughput will also be four times greater, thanks to integrated Thunderbolt 4. The first systems with Tiger Lake are expected to ship this year.
The first discrete Xe-based GPU was also previewed, which is code-named DG1.
Updates to the company's Project Athena were shared as well. The verified designs under this program have been tuned, tested, and verified for system-level innovation with improvements for battery life, responsiveness, instant wake, application compatibility, and more. To date Intel has verified 25 Project Athena designs and thanks to an expanded partnership with Google, the first two verified Chromebooks are coming. These are the ASUS Chrombook Flip and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. The expectation is for another 50 designs to across Windows and Chrome to be verified this year, and for a new target specification to be developed for dual-screen PCs.
Intel also showed off products of its co-engineering efforts with OEMs to develop new devices, such as dual-screen and foldable devices. An example is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold that utilizes Intel Hybrid Technology in the Lakefield processor, which is expected to ship midyear, as well as the Dell Concept Duet. A new concept device with a foldable OLED display, codenamed Horseshoe Bend, was also shown off. This concept device utilizes Tiger Lake mobile processors and is approximately the size of a 12 in laptop, but when it folding touchscreen display is opened up, it is more than 17 in.
Other announcements include working with Netflix to continue efforts on SVT-AV1, Intel's open source encoder for the AV1 codec that is optimized for 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. By using AI, Intel is working to enhance athlete and viewer experiences at Tokyo 2020 with 3D Athlete Tracking. Intel is also working with the sports industry to improving the viewing experience with volumetric video. With Intel True View, the entire volume of a stadium's field can be synthesized to allow viewers to choose any view vantage point and player perspective to stream from their devices. This was demonstrated with a play from the NFL Week 15 game between the Cleveland Browns and Arizona Cardinals. Intel argues that with the data produced from the first quarter of an NFL game reaching 3 TB per minute, tremendous computing is required to achieve this.
Source: Intel
