At CES 2025, Intel let journalists into its private “Innovation Showcase,” where we saw things like prototypes of next-generation laptops and giant 3D stereo portable gaming PCs.
While I was there, also I saw a heavy metal handheld computer on a table that didn’t seem… fully connected… to its screen. When I lifted the screen, it came off easily.
It looked suspiciously light for a real tablet, so I turned it over and saw three connectors underneath:
Above it on a shelf was a laptop with a suspiciously sized piece of plastic on the bottom that looked like a perfect match. A minute later, Intel gaming evangelist Colin Helms confirmed: I was looking at a modular PC concept.
That module contains a complete Intel Lunar Lake computer, all the guts you’d need to make one work outside of the peripherals and screen. It’s basically a reboot of Intel’s abandoned Compute Card idea, except it’s not all Intel’s doing and you should probably never expect it to ship.
It’s a concept from Quanta, a company whose name isn’t often seen on the laptops and tablets they create, because Quanta is an MDG (such as Compal, Pegatron, Wistron and Apple’s most well-known iPhone supplier Foxconn) that designs and manufactures hardware on behalf of brands.
Quanta calls the entire modular system “AI8A”, and the aforementioned module at its core is the “Detachable AI Core”. Helms told me it also connects to other concept computers, including an all-in-one desktop that Intel didn’t have to show off. And presumably, like the Compute Card idea, you could upgrade your computer simply by putting a new module in it.
The modular laptop also has a lot of conceptual features, so many that Intel’s CES staff hadn’t even figured them all out yet.
For starters, the laptop has a motorized hinge, so you can say it open and close your own lid; It also claims to offer eye tracking that lets you scroll through multitasking windows just by looking at where you’d like them to be. Apparently it comes with a mouse built into a ring that you can wear.
Most mundane: a Qi wireless charging pad built into the palm rest, with indicator lights to show the remaining battery capacity.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t try to get anything to work, nor did I manage to ask what “AI8A” means, because I mistakenly thought it said Aiba until I checked my photos closely just now. We were also unable to hot-swap the module between the handheld and laptop, as the module apparently has no battery inside.
Once again, this is a cool computing concept car – it’s not likely that this computer will ever come to market, even in a more practical, less bulky form. Fortunately, we’ve started to see some real, 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 small step forward at CES with its first serviceable modular USB-C port.
Photos by Sean Hollister/The Verge