It wasn’t long ago that some skeptics forecasted that laptop PC sales would dwindle amid competition from tablets and increasingly capable smart phones. But the laptop is “the little engine that could.” Statista now forecasts that sales of notebook computers will surge to 225 million units in 2021, up more than 60% from four years ago.
The popularity of these mobile workhorses is only likely to increase in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global Workplace Analytics estimates that between 25% and 30% of the labor force will work from home multiple days a week by the end of 2021, and a PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey found that 83% of office workers would like the option of working from home at least once a week for the long term.
With office schedules likely to remain fluid for years to come, providing flexible workstations to workers will be more important than ever. In the past, that has meant trading off portability and battery life for slower speeds, dim displays, tinny sound and low-resolution graphics. With limited memory and storage space, adding critical functions like malware protection bogged down performance. And even with all those tradeoffs, many laptops still ran out of juice on a cross-country flight.
That’s why two years ago Intel launched an initiative to rethink the laptop with the goal of bringing the portable computing experience closer to the one on the desktop. Originally called Project Athena, the initiative has evolved into the Intel® Evo™ Platform, a design specification that OEM partners can use to create the next generation of laptops. The specification was derived from extensive research into how people use their laptops and what their biggest frustrations have been with past platforms. A set of goals was then developed to address the most critical issues and set some lofty goals.
Specifically, Evo-certified partners must build products that include:
- At least nine hours of battery life on a 1080-pixel resolution screen,
- The ability to wake from sleep in less than one second,
- Consistent responsiveness,
- A minimum of four hours of battery life from a 30-minute charge, and
- Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity.
Candidate devices are also subjected to a gauntlet of 25 tests to achieve certification.
Intel is doing its part to make these groundbreaking capabilities possible. The new 11th Gen Intel Core Processors introduced such innovations as autonomous dynamic voltage and frequency scaling, which dynamically matches the system-on-a-chip’s frequency and voltage to the bandwidth of the workload to deliver the most power-efficient operation. The processors can also vary the number of cores according to the power requirements of the task, add a 1.25 MB midlevel cache for faster performance and incorporate an onboard graphics processing unit that delivers significant gains in power efficiency as well as massive performance improvements.
Intel is also leveraging its work to bring artificial intelligence to the chip level for mobility applications. For example, the onboard Gaussian Neural Accelerator (GNA 2.0) uses neural noise cancellation to automatically filter out background noise and blur out video conference backgrounds for a more secure and professional experience. These features are on dedicated hardware for the first time, reducing performance overhead and broadening the range of use case scenarios.
The combination of Evo and the built-for-business Intel® vPro® platform brings enterprise-class security, reliability and manageability features to the world’s lightest PCs, with instant-wake responsiveness, unprecedented battery life and a variety of flexible form factors.
The Intel® Evo™ vPro® platform offers the best laptop experience for business users. More than 60 new laptops from top manufacturers will be available this year. The following is just a sampling:
- Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga features an Intel 11th Gen Intel® vPro® processor, always-on responsiveness, 2256 x 1504 video resolution powered by Intel® Iris™ Xe graphics rendering, up to 1 TB of SSD storage and nine hours of battery life packed into a unit that weighs less than 1.1 kg.
- The HP Elite Dragonfly series offers the world’s most secure PC and, with configurations starting at less than 1 kg, one of the lightest. The Elite Dragonfly incorporates such security features as the HP Sure Shutter one-button camera mask, display technology that prevents viewing from side angles and AI-optimised performance. Its battery charges to 50% in just 30 minutes and supports the new Wi-Fi 6 standard out of the box.
- The Dell Latitude 9520 is the world's smallest, lightest and most intelligent 15-in. business PC. It uses built-in AI and Intel Adaptix technology to adjust performance levels according to use and a PC proximity sensor to detect the user’s presence and instantly log in. It delivers an incredible 34 hours of battery life and charges to 80% capacity in 40 minutes.
Innovations like these will keep laptops in sync with the dynamic and unpredictable needs of the post-pandemic workplace and a business environment that demands the utmost performance in any place, at any time.