The Investigation of Foldable Display Form Factor Notebook System & the Design Challenges

Intel's Client Computing Group's (CCG) project Athena is generating a new wave of exciting Evo brand notebook systems. Project Athena has enabled foldable display systems as a new device category. To influence the industry towards this new device category and technology readiness proof point, CCG has developed a foldable display notebook system called Horseshoe Bend. Horseshoe Bend uses a 17.3-inch foldable OLED display that's being enabled by Intel. This paper discusses the Horseshoe Bend system design challenges, innovations required, and solutions implemented. In general, foldable systems need to support usages of multiple form factors into one physical system- 17.3-inch tabletop All-in-one system, and 12.5-inch notebook when folded in laptop posture. This poses multiple challenges-support orthogonal requirements and resolve foldable display system integration issues. This paper details how this system design solved issues of display displacement absorption to integrate into system chassis, higher performance expectation, orthogonal requirements of input/output (I/O) support, new audio and imaging usages, innovations in printed circuit board (PCB) design, among others.