The worst rivals for any chip designer and PC maker are not its direct competitors, but rather devices that their potential customers already own. Therefore, to make those customers buy something new, they need to advance their products at a rapid pace so that a new PC would offer radically better experience than a three-years-old computer. This is apparently what Intel and Lenovo are doing in their joint co-engineering lab in Shanghai.
Intel and Lenovo's Advanced System Innovation Lab serves as a breeding ground where engineers from both companies combine their skills to build next-generation laptops that provide strong performance, elegance, features, and user experience, reports DigiTimes.
Lenovo and Intel have a long history of working together on multiple innovative products, including ThinkPad X-series as well as ThinkPad X Fold series. To build such systems, Intel and Lenovo not only need to overcome hardware-related challenges such as performance, power management, and thermals, but also software-related issues. In addition, Intel's dedicated teams work closely with Lenovo in other co-engineering labs located in Zizhu and Pudong
"We share a long and illustrious history of deep engineering collaboration with Lenovo," said Zheng Jiong (ZJ), senior director of client customer engineering for Intel China's client computing group (CCG). "We work together very well and are thankful for the innovation support Lenovo has given us through joint labs like these."
A notable achievement of the Advanced System Innovation Lab in Shanghai is development of an OLED display driver that can run two OLED screens instead of one, which opens doors to a number of potentially interesting use cases.
"This work was critical to the development of our platform," said Zhijian Mo, director of platform design and development in Lenovo's intelligent devices group.
Furthermore, both companies joined forces with DRAM makers to enhance LPDDR5 memory data transfer rates.
While Lenovo remains a key partner, Intel also teams up with other global PC OEMs and software vendors. Their collective goal is to break technological barriers, identify core issues, and engineer enhanced PC solutions. Several advancements in CPU, power, thermal management, and other PC parts have emerged from this cooperative approach.
Looking ahead, as work on the Meteor Lake platform nears completion, plans for the Lunar Lake platform are already in motion and expected to be ready in 2024. To make Lunar Lake-based PCs radically better than systems in use today, the two companies are again collaborating across multiple fronts, but this is probably something the two companies would prefer not to discuss in detail for now.
"It is a very special project that involves detailed co-engineering efforts between both our teams," said Mo.
