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At CES 2025, Intel let journalists into its private “Innovation Showcase”, where we saw things like new generation laptop prototype and Giant stereo 3D portable gaming PC.
While there, I as well spotted a heavy metal handheld on a table that didn’t seem…completely attached…to his screen. When I lifted the screen, it came off easily.
It felt suspiciously light for being a real tablet, so I turned it over and saw three connectors underneath:
Above him on a shelf was a laptop with a suspiciously sized piece of plastic on the bottom that seemed like a perfect match. A minute later, Intel gaming evangelist Colin Helms confirmed: I saw a modular concept PC.
That module contains a complete Intel Lunar Lake computer, everything you need to get work done outside of peripherals and screen. It’s basically a reboot of The abandoned Intel Compute Card ideaexcept it’s not all made by Intel and you probably shouldn’t ever wait for it to ship.
It is a concept of Quanta, a company whose name is not typically seen on the laptops and tablets they create, because Quanta is an MDG (such as Compal, Pegatron, Wistron and Apple’s best-known iPhone supplier Foxconn) that designs and manufactures hardware for brand names.
He calls the whole modular system “AI8A”, and the aforementioned module at its core is the “Detachable AI Core”. Helms told me it also fits into other computer designs, including an all-in-one desktop that Intel didn’t need to show off. And presumably, like the idea of the Compute Card, you can upgrade your computer just by putting a new module in it.
The modular laptop also has a lot of design bells and whistles, so many that Intel’s CES staff hadn’t yet worked them all out.
For starters, the laptop has a motorized hinge, so you can say it to open and close its own lid; it also claims to offer eye tracking that lets you flick around multitasking windows just by looking where you want to be. Apparently it comes with a mouse built into a ring that you can wear.
The most mundane: a Qi wireless charging pad built into the palmrest, with indicator lights to show the remaining capacity of your battery.
I couldn’t get anything to work, unfortunately, nor did I manage to ask what “AI8A” meant, because I mistakenly thought it said Aiba until I checked my pictures recently. Nor can we swap the module between the laptop and the laptop, since the module apparently doesn’t have a battery inside.
Again, this is cool computer design stuff: it’s not likely that this computer will ever ship, even in a more practical/less gadget form. Fortunately, we are starting to see a real and practical modularity in the laptop space since the death of Intel’s Compute Card. Framework just celebrated its fifth anniversary this week, and Dell took a smaller step forward at CES with its first repairable modular USB-C port.
Photo by Sean Hollister/The Verge
