INSIDE PROJECT ATHENA: HOW INTEL & PC MAKERS ARE CREATING THE ULTRA-RESPONSIVE LAPTOPS OF TOMORROW
A little less than eight years ago Intel helped usher in the era of thin-and-light notebook PCs, then called ultrabooks. Now, Intel and a number of its partners are ready to take the ultrabook to the next level with “Project Athena,” in a multi-year roadmap they unveiled at CES.
Intel executives say they have the support of partners including Acer, Asus, Dell, Google, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sharp. Yes, Google. You’ll eventually see “Athena”-specced Chromebooks, too. What Project Athena notebooks will eventually be branded as hasn’t been formally decided yet, but the timetable has; the first Project Athena laptops will ship in the second half of 2019. Unfortunately, they were not at CES.
Ultrabooks debuted in 2011, arguably as a response to the incredibly slim MacBook Air that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was then pulling out of manila envelopes. But don’t think that Project Athena will go even thinner. According to Josh Newman, the general manager of mobile innovation segments for Intel, Athena’s goal is for PC
