Consumer Electronics Show 2021: GM, Intel

Normally, at this time of year I would be in Las Vegas, as I have been in January for the last several years to attend CES. As somebody on an Endgadget video said, "this year we get to experience CES the way most consumers do". Despite the name, the Consumer Electronics Show (although I think these days it is officially just CES), it is only open to industry professionals, not consumers themselves.

The three essential things for attending CES in person are:

• Your CES show pass. This is easy to get since all the major hotels have somewhere you can pick it up, along with the approaches to many monorail stations. Last year you could even pick up your pass in San Jose airport.
• A monorail ticket for the days you will be there. Don't even think of trying to get a taxi or Uber.
• Comfortable shoes. It is normal to walk 25-30,000 steps each day

This year, the essential things are:

• A CES pass that gives you access to the video streams
• A computer
• Shoes optional

In fact, my preferred way to watch when I am going to write a blog post is to use one computer to stream the video, and with Airplay, stream that to my big screen TV and speakers. Then use my other computer to take notes. I can take screenshots on the first computer that I can then use to illustrate the post.

My first impressions of a virtual CES is that it is much more structured than an in-person CES. My normal way of operating is to attend some of the more important keynotes, but also wander around the show floor and see what is around. That way I get a feel for what is new and important, and I can talk to people on the booths.There are virtual booths at this year's CES, but with literally ten thousand exhibitors, you can't really do the equivalent of strolling around the show to absorb the zeitgeist.

There are a lot more "keynotes" than usual, from a wide range of companies (Intel, AMD, General Motors, Sony, LG, Samsung, Best Buy, Walmart, and more). Of course, keynotes are always pretty much scripted, but in-person they come across as more authentic than they do with top-notch video production, where they seem more like a TV commercial.

I'm going to focus on just a few of the presentations that seem the most relevant to the sort of people who read Breakfast Bytes, with a couple here, and more in a subsequent post.

General Motors

This one might seem like a surprising choice. For a start, you might not realize that there is a huge automotive aspect to CES. However, even given that, General Motors sounds like an odd choice to companies that seem to be more on the cutting edge. But two things make General Motors interesting: they own Cruise Automation, one of the leaders in autonomous driving technology, and they have (with LG Chem) developed a new battery technology that is claimed to be better than the lithium-ion batteries that everyone else uses.

GM calls the battery technology Ultium, and the associated power trains Ultium Drive, which can be used for front-wheel-drive, rear-wheel-drive, or four-wheel-drive, depending on the vehicle. The cells are rectangular, as opposed to cylindrical like li-ion batteries are, which means less space is wasted between the cells, leading to higher energy density. The number of packs in the vehicles varies depending on the requirements, from the Chevy Bolt at the low-end, up to Hummer at the high-end.

GM promises over-the-air (OTA) updates, as they put it:

you should expect both ongoing free updates, as well as opportunities to purchase premium content and feature upgrades.

GM calls the autonomous technology Super Cruise, which they claim as the "industry's first truly hands-free driving assistance system". Paging Elon Musk! GM forecasts Super Cruise will be in 22 GM vehicles by 2023 including a vehicle it calls Chevrolet Bolt EUV (nothing to do with EUV lithography, of course). It will be the first electric vehicle, and GM's first vehicle, to feature Super Cruise driving.

In the next five years, GM will introduce 30 new electrical vehicles (EVs) globally. The Bolt and Bolt EUV, three Buicks in China, and even the GMC Hummer EV. "The irony of introducing Hummer as an EV is not lost on us". GM also talked about the Cadillac Halo line, which is just a concept at this point (it has no steering wheel so requires solid level-5 autonomy). See the picture.

There is also a passenger-carrying drone that they call "the vertical takeoff and landing drone" or "vertol". Yes, maybe we really will get flying cars. "It uses a 90 kilowatt-hour EV motor"..." That is one of my pet peeves. It has to be the wrong unit since kilowatt-hours are a unit of energy (battery capacity, for example), not power, so not something a motor can have.

There's more, especially in the package delivery area (and FedEx dropped in to say it would take delivery of the first of the EV600 vans).

If you have a CES pass, you can watch the whole keynote, but I recommend Endgadget's edited highlights GM’s CES 2021 keynote in 10 minutes.

Intel

Intel started by announcing that Ice Lake is ramping to volume this quarter in their 10nm process. As is well-known, this process is a couple of years late due to yield issues of some sort. For a look under the hood of Ice Lake, see my post from last summer HOT CHIPS Server and Laptop Processors: Intel, AMD, IBM, Marvell.

Intel moved on to chips for "thin and light" laptops, a term I don't remember hearing before. It seems that there are going to be over 60 models (of laptops, not chips) introduced during 2021.

There are also Pentium and Celeron processors designed on 10nm, too. I think those go in laptops for the education market. To be honest, Intel's processor line is so complex it is hard to know which chips occupy which niches. The picture above shows just how complex it is: Intel is announcing 27 new processors for busines, 6 for education, 12 for high-performance mobile, and 8 for desktop. That's more processors than cards in a Las Vegas deck.

And in a Steve Jobs-style one more thing, Intel gave the first public look at its next-generation processor, Alder Lake. This is built on a new 10nm process superfin, with faster transistors and improved MIM (metal-insulator-metal) capacitors. It is also, I think, the first time Intel has created a processor with both high-performance cores mixed with low-power cores. If you watch the video below, you can see it running Windows and games...prototypes at least already exist.

If you want to know more, and you don't have a CES pass, then I recommend Intel's CES 2021 keynote in 10 minutes:

Next Post

My next CES post will cover AMD, NVIDIA, Samsung, and more.

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