At CES 2025, Intel let journalists into its private “Innovation Showcase,” where we saw things like Prototype of next generation laptop And Giant Stereo 3D Handheld Gaming PC,
When I was there, I Too Saw a heavy metal handheld on a table that didn't seem to be fully connected…to its screen. When I lifted the screen it came away easily.
It felt suspiciously mild that it was actually a tablet, so I turned it over and saw three connectors at the bottom:
Above it, on a shelf, was a laptop with a suspiciously shaped piece of plastic at the bottom that seemed to match exactly. A minute later, Intel gaming evangelist Colin Helms confirmed that I was looking at a prototype modular PC.
That module comprises an entire Intel Lunar Lake computer, a complete part of a PC. It's basically a reboot of Intel's abandoned compute card ideaExcept that's not all Intel is doing and you should never expect to see shipments of it.
This is a concept from Quanta, a company whose name you don't usually see on the laptops and tablets they make, because Quanta an odm (such as Compal, Pegatron, Wistron, and Apple's better known iPhone suppliers Foxconn) which designs and manufactures hardware on behalf of brand names.
Quanta calls the entire modular system “AI8A”, and the above module at its center is the “detachable AI core”. Helms told me it also plugs into other concept computers, including an all-in-one desktop that Intel didn't need to show. And possibly, like the compute card idea, you could upgrade your computer by inserting a brand new module into it.
The modular laptop also has a lot of concept-y bells and whistles, so much so that Intel's CES staff hasn't even worked on them yet.
For starters, the laptop has a motorized hinge, so you can Tell opening and closing its own lid; It also claims to offer eye-tracking that lets you move around multitasking windows simply by looking where you want them to be. It apparently comes with a mouse integrated into a ring that you can wear.
The simplest: a built-in Qi wireless charging pad in the palmrest, which has indicator lights to show your battery capacity remaining.
Unfortunately, I couldn't try to do any of this, nor did I manage to ask what “AI8A” meant, because I mistakenly thought it said Aiba until I just looked at my photos. Not examined closely. Nor can we hotswap the module between a handheld and a laptop, as there's obviously no battery inside the module.
Again, this is a cool computing concept car: it's unlikely this computer will ever ship, even in more practical/less gadgety form. thankfully, We're starting to see some real, practical modularity in the laptop sector Since the death of Intel's compute cards. Framework just celebrated its fifth anniversary This week, and Dell took a small step forward at CES Its first modular repairable USB-C port,
Photos by Shawn Hollister/The Verge