that you're watching out by asking

a seemingly simple question, what's a computer.

And, I'm kind of obsessed with that question or,

more specifically, with how PCs are changing.

We know that Microsoft has a Surface

and Apple has the iPad, and the Mac,

and Google has Chromebooks, but that leaves out

one really important company, Intel.

So, here's a question.

What does Intel think the future of PCs looks like?

To answer that question, I went to Intel's headquarters

in Santa Clara, California.

We went inside the room that Intel calls

The Client Experience Center, which is a boring name

for actually not a very boring place.

It's where Intel works on prototypes

for entirely new kinds of computers.

This is Murali Veeramoney, a Senior Director

here at Intel.

Veeramoney is one of the people in charge

of making stuff like what you see spread out on this table.

So at this table we're looking at the,

looks like almost a whole development process,

microcosm for Tiger Rapids?

This is the Tiger Rapids prototype.

You might have seen it before, Intel's actually

been showing it off for a few months now.

It has an LCD screen on one side

and an e-paper display on the other

where a keyboard would usually go.

You've got the idea, and then you start

moving on to actually like 3D printing stuff

and building boards?

- Exactly, so then comes the electronics of it,

which is, you know, how does all of these fit

into the form factor that we have,

so we do different kinds of motherboards

and here's an example of another Motherboard we did.

It's a whole computer, the whole laptop is this size.

- So, yeah, Intel makes computers,

sort of.

Intel has to do more than just come up with the idea,

it actually has to build it to prove out

that it's even possible.

Intel goes 90% of the way

towards creating a finished product.

It builds the boards, checks the thermals,

and even develops a little bit of the software on Windows.

But, you can't go into a store and buy an Intel computer,

they don't sell stuff.

What you will be able to do is go into a store

later this year and buy the Lenovo Yoga Book C930,

which is sort of like a bigger version

of this prototype device.

You can see that the two things here

are basically the same idea, one side's an LCD panel

and the other side is an e-paper display.

- We work very closely with Lenovo

to get their product to market using our learnings

and our engineering collaterals to the things they want,

and then they say, okay, that's pretty good,

let us now do it our way.

- You kind of give them like a blueprint

and then they modify it to their own needs.

- We just have to work with them

and realize it's their product.

- Right. Correct.

And make sure that we can satisfy our eventual requirements,

which is all silicon.

- You have done a huge amount of work

to even get to this point.

How does it feel?

Like as to basically be making nearly consumer-ready

products and then not finishing that last mile?

What's that like for you?

- It's a tough thing, and I tell my team,

the analogy I give is like, bringing up your kids.

You want them to grow, want them to have

a successful life, but we don't get to live their life.

- Right.

- So it's the same thing like us,

we don't get to put our product

because that's not our business goal.

- So, hang on, we got to stop here

because there's a thing that we haven't

really talked about yet.

Intel has had a

garbage year.

It started with Spectre and Meltdown

which were two huge security vulnerabilities

that required everybody to slow down their chips,

and then, ah, Intel CEO resigned in July

after disclosing an improper relationship with an employee

and as of right now, it still only has an interim CEO,

and the other thing to say is that

for a long while now, Intel has been facing

kind of a downturn in its core business.

So it's spent the past couple of years

trying some really weird stuff.

We went behind the scenes at CES is here

and we saw drones, and voxels, and self-driving cars,

and back in January, we also went to Intel's office

to see some normal-looking AR glasses

that they called Vont, and that project got canceled

because Intel couldn't figure out

how to get it from prototype to product.

So, you know, yeah,

garbage year, not great.

All of which means that, right now,

I think Intel is trying to refocus

on the PC, and specifically on what the PC

is turning into.

- My grand theory of Intel is

PCs are great, smartphones came along and argh,

but then you hit Ultrabooks and that

was a really big moment, and then

there was a bunch of weird stuff that you made,

glasses, and balls that charge things and,

you're making drones, and all that stuff,

but it feels like it's time for the next generation

of PCs to happen again.

- It's fair to say we do experiment with things.

But I would say the magic that we have

in our engineering capability

when married to our customer's engineering capability,

is we bring practical innovations

that can change or allow people to use

computers in new ways, but also can scale into the market.

- Now, Intel's real goal with making all these prototypes

is to create something that's actually possible

for an OEM to make and it'll

actually get sold on the market.

Now, Tiger Rapids was one thing, but the next thing is this.

A dual-screen device called Copper Harbor.

It's a cool prototype, but it's also really prototypy.

The software is more proof of concept

than actually usable thing.

- In Copper Harbor the whole idea is to have two

symmetrical screens of similar capabilities coming together

and that opens up a completely new landscape.

- Okay, two screens, but if I want to use it

as one big screen, like it's just like a,

I don't know, a tablet, I could open up Excel here,

Excel pops up and voila, we've got 46 rows.

One other demos you showed me was PowerPoint.

- You have the speaker notes on one side

and you're presenting on the other side,

so you could be presenting this to me,

so this is showing the use case of having

a Tiger Rapids like, but much more powerful

because this whole side is color.

- Why is this better than just having

a big old tablet with two windows open?

- The whole idea is that it can fold,

it can be a portable device,

- Right, okay,

sure - multiple modes

like for example, you couldn't do the temp mode

on a tablet.

Of course, the tablet has its own capability that,

until we get screens which kind of span across,

you know, there are benefits of the tablet, as well.

- Right.

And I guess the other thing, not only does it fold up

smaller to carry it, but it could also fold this way

so that you've got a nicer reading experience or something.

- [Murali] Yeah, yeah.

- Whether we actually see this dual-screen thing

turn into an actual product, is still an open question,

but if you want to know what Intel thinks

the future of PCs looks like,

it looks a little bit like this.

- We have driven the thickness of PCs

to single millimeter thicknesses, I mean, super thin.

What's gonna happen is as you carry your thin machine

around, you're gonna be able to use it

more, and more, and more, to do the things you want.

You'll have the different surfaces,

you'll have amazing screen technology to do,

not only screens and keyboards,

but you can imagine other things you can do

on a second screen.

- After everything that I saw at Intel,

here's what I think its idea of what's next

for the PC actually is.

That they're gonna look and act

a little bit more like phones.

That you're gonna be more willing to carry them around

with you wherever you go.

Intel, it missed out on the first 10 years of smartphones,

so now it has to be hyper-focused

on what it's good at, to make sure

that it doesn't miss out on the next interesting thing.

And you know what that might be?

Computers.

Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching

and let me know, would you use a device

that has a screen here, another screen here,

and then it folds and folds the other way?

Let me know on the comments, and if you want to know

how to actually use all of the weird technology

we keep talking about, we've got a great

tip series called Workflow, you should check that out, too.