Without the Covid-19 pandemic Computex 2020 would have already come and gone, like a shooting star leaving a series of glittering tech advances in its trail. At the time of writing it is scheduled for 28th - 30th September 2020. Covid-19 doesn't looks like a problem in host country Taiwan now with only seven new cases discovered in the last month (cases, not deaths), and these were 'imported' not locally transmitted. Hopefully, more countries will have caught up before the end of September.
Helping to fill the Computex void somewhat are a series of scheduled talks that are currently being made available. At the time of writing we are mid-schedule with companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm already done, with Supermicro, Delta Electronics talks today, and BenQ tomorrow. Ahead of these talks Intel CEO Bob Swann kindly shared a message about what his firm is doing in the coming weeks and months.
Swan's message begins at 3mins 18sec onwards in the above 8 minutes video.
Swan started by thanking the Computex organisers TAITRA for hosting the event over the years and being long term partners of Intel. He went on to address the challenges posed by Covid-19, not just in terms of events like Computex - but for computing and society in general.
Interestingly, Swan quickly segued from Covid to CPU benchmarks. In his message he said "We should see this moment as an opportunity to shift our focus as an industry from benchmarks to the benefits and impacts of the technology we create". The shift of focus sounds rather political, and may mean that Intel isn't going to have many first place benchmark scores to boast about as 2020 progresses. We shall see.
Moving onto more solid ground, the Intel CEO announced that a new data centre product and platform would be introduced in a few weeks time. Cooper Lake will "further underpin our leadership in AI," asserted Swan. I am assuming this leadership will be indicated, to would be adoptees, by benchmark data.
For consumers Swan confirmed that Tiger Lake processors will be introduced to "cement our position as the undisputed leader in mobile computing and PC innovation". Again, it will be interesting to see how Intel shows it is the 'leader' without benchmark comparisons.
For some background reading, in recent months we have seen a number of Tiger Lake leaks and interesting benchmarks of this processor family's integrated Xe GPU.
