Intel: Laptops will no longer need cables in the near future

Intel envisions a future where laptops can work completely wirelessly. Not only the internet connection would then be set up wirelessly, also charging and possibly docking in a docking station would be possible without the intervention of cables.

That’s what Intel CEO Kirk Skaugen said during a presentation at Computex. The chip giant thinks that charging cables could be a thing of the past in a few years if the industry switches to wireless charging. Intel is part of the Alliance 4 Wireless Power, a partnership of companies that supports the Rezence charging technology. This technique works on the basis of magnetic resonance and should be strong enough to charge not only smartphones and tablets, but also laptops. Skaugen showed a setup where a table was equipped with a Rezence loader. By simply placing a laptop on the table, it started charging.

Connecting to a docking station, something that is important for the business market, can also be done without the intervention of wires and physical connectors, according to Intel. The WiGig standard could be used for this. In a demonstration, the manufacturer used a laptop based on a Broadwell processor equipped with a wireless chip that can handle WiGig. By simply placing the laptop near a receiver, the image from the laptop was wirelessly transmitted to an external monitor. It is intended that the technology will eventually also support input devices such as keyboard and mouse, as well as external drives. WiGIG is a wireless standard that operates on the 60GHz band with maximum speeds up to three times faster than the fastest version of Wi-Fi, 802.11ac.

Intel plans to include these wireless technologies in its next reference design for laptops, which should be released simultaneously with the Skylake chip architecture, the successor to Broadwell. That will be sometime towards the end of 2015.