Designing All-in One PCs at IDF2013
September 10, 2013, Intel Developer Forum, San Francisco—Steve Porter, Gokul Subramaniam, and Arvind Sundaram describe the market opportunities and design requirements for all-in-one PC, the merger of laptops and tablets. Intel is pushing the new form factor to compensate for the drop in PCs and laptops.
This market is projected to grow to be large starting at 1M units this year and growing to over 20M by 2017. The opportunities are in emerging markets and in corporate markets where the IT managers want the security and management capabilities and the users want greater portability. Portable all-in-one platforms can meet both requirements and offer other capabilities that tablets cannot duplicate.
In general, PC devices offer versatility and performance for many compute tasks. Built-in expandability and interfaces to other devices makes the basic PC adaptable to many environments. The desktop all-in-one machines added uncluttered style to the basic PC, and the portable all-in-one machines make that device mobile.
The design requirements for the portable devices are in low weight, thickness, thermal-mechanical design, and in offering a flat tablet-like device for flat table top displays. Power and height constraints demand SSD, mSATA, or eMMC storage and the platform must also integrate the sensor arrays that are expected in smart phones.
Users expect to use their smart phones and tablets for consumption-oriented functions and will consider an all-in-one PC for other uses like creation and collaboration. The availability of a mouse and keyboard in the new platforms enable the standard compute user experience. At the same time, the size and weight allow for portability and personalization without giving up on performance or battery life compared to a tablet. The standard PC interfaces allow for multi-user, multi-device collaboration, while the touch interface enables multi-touch and graphics manipulation.
The availability of screen sizes over 15 inches makes the platforms better for watching video, according to one survey. Medium size screens of 20-23 inches are the biggest size that is still relatively easy to carry, fits into most spaces in the home, and provides a good video experience.
The challenges for the systems include weight, power, large area touch performance, systems integration, and manufacturing. The display contributes the most in weight and power. Moving to new display substrates and cover lens can help reduce weight, and better forms of backlighting can reduce power. Touch performance is enhanced with silver metal mesh rather than ITO, but touch route optimization and driver tuning is still very important.
The overall system needs to address the placement, calibration, and tuning of all the sensors, mike arrays, cameras, and other non-compute resources. Mechanical analysis and PCB layering decisions as well as materials tradeoffs are critical to manufacturability. A modular approach will help to achieve an optimal layout and also improve repairability.
The new device category will need changes to the PC ecosystem to make the all-in-ones go to high volume. Engineering will have to bring silicon innovation and a differentiated IP portfolio into the picture, while marketing has to work with software applications developers and retailers to bring everything together when the platforms are ready.
