Intel is formally exiting the non-public pc market, ceasing all funding and improvement in in Subsequent Unit of Computing (NUC) venture — as soon as billed as the way forward for mainstream computing and nonetheless a well-liked alternative as compact but highly effective programs for every little thing from desktop use to robotics.
“Now we have determined to cease direct funding within the Subsequent Unit of Compute [sic] (NUC) Enterprise and pivot our technique to allow our ecosystem companions to proceed NUC innovation and development,” an Intel spokesperson confirmed in a press release, following a report on Serve The Dwelling. “This choice won’t impression the rest of Intel’s Shopper Computing Group (CCG) or Community and Edge Computing (NEX) companies. Moreover, we’re working with our companions and clients to make sure a clean transition and success of all our present commitments — together with ongoing help for NUC merchandise presently in market.”
Intel’s Subsequent Unit of Computing (NUC) isn’t any extra, with the corporate confirming it’s ceasing funding. (📷: Intel)
Intel launched the Subsequent Unit of Computing (NUC) initiative in 2013, providing a novel type issue measuring simply 4×4″ and together with Intel’s low-power Celeron processor with built-in graphics. Over the its ten generations, NUC boards can be launched with a spread of processors from the corporate’s Atom, Celeron, Pentium, and Core households, primarily targeted on the low-power fashions.
The NUC vary additionally loved a departure into higher-performance components within the “Cranium Canyon,” “Hades Canyon,” “Ghost Canyon,” “Phantom Canyon,” “Panther Canyon,” and “Dragon Canyon” fashions, together with in some instances AMD or NVIDIA graphics processors with a deal with gaming efficiency. The NUC commonplace even made a short foray into the world of laptops, although with out business success.
The unique low-power small-footprint NUC was joined by bigger and extra highly effective designs within the “Canyon” households of gaming programs. (📷: Intel)
The small dimension, comparatively low energy draw, and shocking compute efficiency of the NUC programs noticed them win favor in a spread of markets — together with within the embedded sector, the place NUCs have usually discovered a use driving robotics and machine studying tasks. NVIDIA’s Jetson household of embedded programs has been consuming into this on the greater finish, nonetheless, whereas the Raspberry Pi and related single-board computer systems have all-but taken over on the low finish.
Discovering itself squeezed, then, and at a time when the march of Moore’s Legislation — the statement by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the variety of transistors on a modern half traits in the direction of doubling each 18 months, since became a roadmap for the semiconductor trade — is hitting onerous bodily limits, Intel is opting out: the present technology of NUC programs would be the firm’s final.
