The transformative power of computing to help people do more is clear. At CES 2021, Intel Executive Vice President Gregory Bryant and other Intel executives highlight how Intel is executing and driving innovation in process technology, packaging and architecture to deliver that transformative computing experience for consumers and businesses alike.
As we enter the era of distributed intelligence, computing is pervasive and intelligence is distributed. Put simply: Everything looks like a computer, and everything is in the cloud. At CES 2021, Bryant and team expand on how Intel is delivering for its customers as the company embraces the incredible growth opportunity this data revolution has created. This includes Intel introducing more than 50 processors for business, education, mobile and gaming computing platforms – resulting in more than 500 new designs for laptops and desktops coming to market in 2021.
More: Intel at CES 2021 (Press Kit)
Live Blog: Follow along below for real-time updates of this virtual event.
1:00 p.m.: Welcome everyone to Intel at CES 2021. I’m Marcus Yam, technology evangelist at Intel, and I will be providing a play-by-play of our upcoming press conference “Do More With the Power of Computing.”
Like our previous launch of 11th Gen Core “Tiger Lake” processors, this is a virtual event. We miss seeing everyone in at CES Las Vegas, but fortunately we have lots of news to share with you today – get ready for new processors galore!
Kicking off the conference is Gregory Bryant, Intel Executive VP and Client Computing Group leader, whom we often call “GB” at Intel.
“While we can’t be together in person, I am grateful we can still connect through the power of technology,” says GB. “It’s this ability – to connect hundreds of thousands of us all over the globe – that truly demonstrates the essential role technology plays in our lives. … We live in a world where computing is now pervasive. Computers are no longer just a PC or a server.”
GB talks about how computers are interconnected, part of the network, the hospital, the car, etc. “And computing is the heart of everything we do at Intel – we’re a computing company”
1:02 p.m.: A couple recent examples: the major design win with Amazon Web Services for the Habana Gaudi AI accelerators and the news shared today by Mobileye, an Intel company creating autonomous vehicle technology.
GB announces that production shipments have started for next-generation Intel Xeon Scalable 10nm “Ice Lake” server processors with volume ramping throughout this quarter. ❄ Cloud, enterprise and networking businesses, brace yourselves!
1:04 p.m.: Since launching in September, there are now more than 120 11th Gen Core designs, with 50 Intel Evo designs with verified performance from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, among others.
That’s a broad array of choice. “You won’t see a ‘one system fits all’ mentality from Intel and its partners,” says GB. “Only Intel can deliver this breadth and scale of designs, because we have deep technical partnerships with more than 150 companies around the world.”
1:05 p.m.: The news today: new processors for business; new family of processors for education, and two new lines of processors for “absolute performance leadership, as measured by real world performance.”
GB turns it over to Stephanie Hallford to talk business, but not before he teases that there will be a surprise at the end.
Hallford, VP and GM of Business Client Platforms, says that the impact of the global pandemic has businesses accelerating transformation, adapting to new cloud realities, and keeping their workers safe and productive by supporting remote work. “While we forecasted the need for remote security and manageability, COVID-19 greatly accelerated and complicated these requirements.”
Enter the Intel vPro platform that focuses on three key areas, Hallford explains.
- Security: “vPro is the world’s most comprehensive hardware-based security available for businesses today. Software alone is not enough.”
- Manageability: “vPro is the only solution with hardware-based remote manageability giving businesses the ability to reach – and if needed, patch – all their systems regardless of location.”
- Performance: “Business-class performance to enable productivity, video collaboration and content creation – even in a remote work environment.”
Naturally, 11th Gen Core is getting suited up (or cozy WFH loungewear these days) with vPro.
1:07 p.m.: Hallford walks through a demo of two laptops, one with Intel vPro and the other running an AMD processor. The vPro system has an Intel-invented Control-Flow Enforcement Technology, while the other one does not.
“Both systems are open to the same webpage. As we scroll down the page, there is an advertisement that is hiding a control flow attack. Let’s click on it to see what happens on each system,” says Hallford. “On the non-Intel system, the attack begins completely undetected.”
“Now, on the Intel vPro system, let’s click the same link. As you can see, we detect and block the attack.”
1:08 p.m.: 11th Gen Intel vPro also means “Tiger Lake” performance. 🐅 “Up to 23% faster productivity with Office 365. … 50% faster productivity compared to the competition while on video conference. … 1.8x faster video editing,” notes Hallford.
Dialing vPro up to ‘11’ also includes bringing Intel Evo to businesses, Hallford announces. “It combines the security and manageability of vPro and the beautiful thin and light designs of Evo.”
There will be more than 60 new vPro and Evo vPro laptops this year, scaling Core i5 and Core i7. Hallford holds up one of the first examples, a Dell Latitude 9420: “It’s the world’s first business PC featuring ExpressSign-in 2.0 with Intel Visual Sensing Technology.”
1:10 p.m.: Joining the presentation (virtually) is Chuck Simmons, vice president at Accenture.
“Our clients have faced numerous challenges in this pandemic,” Simmons says. “With remote workers, particularly at home, it is so difficult for us to dispatch a very expensive resource to repair that PC. With Intel and the vPro platform, we’re able to get to that device remotely, monitor it, manage that device, and more importantly, resolve any issues.”
Hallford asks why Accenture chose Intel, to which Simmons answers, “We chose vPro for the following capabilities: number one, it delivers performance; number two it delivers the highest level of security; and number three, it has the highest reliability of any processor in the marketplace. … For our living platform, hands down Intel is the platform of choice.”
1:12 p.m.: Moving from working to learning, Caitlin Anderson, GM of Commercial Client, takes the virtual stage in a classroom environment to talk about the PC in education.
The life altering effects of the global pandemic carries through here as well. “COVID-19 and the move to digital learning has accelerated demand for PCs in education. We’re seeing an uptick of nearly 37% year-on-year,” says Anderson. “And retail demand is up significantly as well – we estimate that at least 10% of devices purchased at retail are for students.”
New processors to serve the education market: Intel Pentium Silver and Celeron processors.
“For the first time, Intel Pentium Silver and Celeron processors are designed on our 10nm architecture, delivering up to 35% better performance gen on gen,” Anderson says.
1:15 p.m.: Presentation then cuts to Michael A. Campbell, global director and head of education, with a demonstration of the new Intel Pentium processor (codenamed “Jasper Lake”) compared with MediaTek’s 8183 processor.
“On both devices, a video conferencing call is running in the background, realistic of a student’s school experience today,” says Campbell, and introduces an example learning assignment to download, build and explore a moon rover Lego model, using the Tinkercad app.
“As you can see, with our new, completely re-designed platform, the Intel powered system finishes the render way ahead of the competition… so a student using the Intel device would be able to interact with the finished model right away.”
Back to Anderson, who confirms that the new Pentium and Celeron processors will be on Windows, Chrome and Linux devices this year.
1:16 p.m.: 30% of school children lack internet access or laptops for learning. “At Intel, we want to do our part to help change this,” says Anderson. “Over the last 15 years we have invested more than $1B globally in education, including training for more than 15 million teachers. … In 2021, we will continue these efforts.”
1:17 p.m.: Anderson introduces a video featuring one of the education partnerships with the Social Works Foundation with founder Chance the Rapper, who explains that Intel provided $250,000 for laptops so that students could access remote learning pods. “There is no remote learning without assistance,” said Chance the Rapper.
“I’ve seen these students grow so much since we started these pods,” says Tori Niestrom, pod leader at SocialWorks.
1:19 p.m.: Back to the virtual Intel stage, now with Chris Walker, corporate VP and GM of the Mobile Client Platforms Group. “Not only does the PC serve as our remote office and remote school,” he says. “It’s also our private movie theater, our e-sports arena, our family reunion and our Friday night happy hour.”
1:20 p.m.: Walker kicks it over to Ksenia Chistyakova, technical marketing lead in the Client Computing Group, who summarizes 11th Gen Core first announced last fall. (Check out the live blog from the Tiger Lake launch for all the news.)
Another head-to-head comparison vs. the competition! 🥊 AMD R7 vs Intel Core i7 on a simulated workload that consists of a common task for creators: importing, editing, and then exporting a video.
“The Intel system has 4 cores, but with enhanced AI capabilities, it’s able to speed through the workload nearly 1.3 times faster than the competitor’s 8-core system,” notes Chistyakova.
1:22 p.m.: Chris Walker back on screen with the announcement of 11th Gen Intel Core Chromebooks, including some Intel Evo designs. Some quick bullet points: 3 million apps on Google Play; 2.5x faster multitasking productivity vs. 10th Gen Core; and 5x faster web productivity vs. Mediatek.
Walker holds up an Acer device that will support Thunderbolt 4 for fast storage transfers and multi-monitor connections.
1:23 p.m.: Walker says people are spending more time than ever playing games, upwards of 60% more gaming hours. He didn’t cite a specific reason for this increasing number, but I have my theories. 🕵️♂️
If you’re not leaving the house as much, you might want to game more on a powerful desktop, and for that Walker shares that the 11th Gen Intel Core S-series “Rocket Lake” desktop processors will have “IPC gains of upwards of 19* percent gen on gen our S-series processors bring a new core architecture, support for 20 PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes off the CPU and new AI capabilities.”
*Performance update! Based on January 2021 measurements on Intel Internal reference platforms running SPEC CPU 2017 1-copy rate on 11th Gen Intel Core i9-11900K vs 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10900K (running each at the same fixed frequency).
These new 11th Gen desktop chips launch later this quarter.
1:24 p.m.: Back to mobile gaming, there’s a special edition, 4-core 11th Gen Intel Core H-series coming for ultraportable gaming on thin devices, with a “next-generation” Nvidia GeForce GPU. “In total, we have more than 50 designs launching from our top OEMs, including Asus, Acer, HP, VAIO, and this device from MSI, measuring in at 16.6mm thin,” says Walker, holding up the MSI.
1:26 p.m.: Chistyakova is back with another performance comparison of an Intel 11th Gen Core i7 8-core vs an AMD R9 12-core running Metro Exodus.
Now back to mobile with the 4-core special edition 11th Gen Core H-series that Walker just announced, running a mission in the latest Destiny 2 expansion – Beyond Light. “The game’s been set at ultra-HD 4K resolution and running at high settings,” says Chistyakova. As you can see on our new 11th Gen H-Series processor with the upcoming Nvidia GPU, the gameplay at 4K is buttery smooth. This level of performance is simply unheard of on an extremely thin and ultra-portable solution, and I can’t wait to share these frame rates when the GPU launches!”
1:28 p.m.: Chris Walker: “We know there’s even more we can do, so I am proud to announce we are bringing the latest in desktop caliber gameplay and creation to mobile with our 8-core 11th Gen H-series processors.”
(Codenamed Tiger Lake-H! 🐯) Coming later this year.
“Speeds up to 5GHz across multiple cores! It includes support for PCIe Gen 4 architecture with 20 lanes to the CPU. This gives you flexibility and powers the fastest storage and graphics available today – providing close to 40GB/s, which is 5x more CPU-attached bandwidth than any other laptop platform outside of our own 10th gen core family.”
1:29 p.m.: Back to GB with a summary of today’s news:
- 4 new families of processors from entry to premium
- 27 new CPUs built specifically for business
- 6 new CPUs for education
- 12 high performance mobile CPUs
- and 8 high performance desktop CPUs for consumer
Resulting in more than 500 new designs for mobile and desktop coming to market in 2021.
But what about that surprise? It’s Alder Lake running live in a desktop PC! 😲 “I want to give you a sneak peak of our next generation processor code named Alder Lake, coming in the 2H of 2021 – this processor is a significant breakthrough in x86 architecture as it combines high performance cores and high efficiency cores into a single product for the first time.
“And here it is, for the first time publicly, already powered on and running Windows!”
And that’s it. “Here’s to a healthy, happy and WONDERFUL new year,” closes GB.
Hear hear! Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Lots more to come! 🔥🔥🔥
More: Intel at CES 2021
Tags: CES 2021, Gregory Bryant