5 things we learned from Lenovo Tech World'24

In a landmark event where the CEOs of AMD, Intel and Nvidia all took to the stage, the theme of "smarter AI for all" was never far away, writes Tim Danton

- Tim Danton

Lenovo uses its annual Tech World event to showcase its latest technologies, but don't imagine laptops or PCs. This year in Seattle, its theme was "Smarter AI for all", and while we saw the debut of one new ThinkPad (see "Hard news") there was far more talk about AI in the cloud. And partnerships.

Which is why the first thing we learned was perhaps the most bizarre: AMD and Intel are working together.

1. x86 ain't dead yet

AMD and Intel announced they were going into partnership at Tech World. Well, almost. The companies simultaneously posted about the all-new "x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group" at the same time that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger took to the stage.

"Some have said, well, you know, is the x86 done?" he said. "Well, I'll tell you, rumours of my death are severely exaggerated. We are alive and well, and the x86 is thriving." The two silicon giants are joined by big hitters such as Dell, Google, HP, Lenovo and Meta, along with Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, and Linus Torvalds.

"The advisory group brings together leaders from across the ecosystem to shape the future of the x86 to simplify software development," said Gelsinger, "to ensure interoperability and interface consistency, to provide developers with standard architecture tools, instruction sets, to have a clear view of the future." But it wasn't a defensive move against Arm and Apple, he insisted, but about expansion. "We think of it as one of the most significant periods of innovation in front of us, and we see that the x86 architecture, this foundation of computing for decades, is about to go through a period of customisation, expansion, scalability," he argued, declaring that AI would present many opportunities to keep the x86 ecosystem "robust and growing".