Intel is formally exiting the private laptop market, ceasing all funding and growth 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 techniques for every thing from desktop use to robotics.
“We’ve 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 Home. “This determination won’t influence the rest of Intel’s Shopper Computing Group (CCG) or Community and Edge Computing (NEX) companies. Moreover, we’re working with our companions and prospects to make sure a clean transition and achievement of all our present commitments — together with ongoing help for NUC merchandise presently in market.”
Intel’s Subsequent Unit of Computing (NUC) is not 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 kind 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 could be launched with a variety 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 give attention to gaming efficiency. The NUC customary even made a quick 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 techniques. (📷: Intel)
The small dimension, comparatively low energy draw, and stunning compute efficiency of the NUC techniques noticed them win favor in a variety 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 techniques has been consuming into this on the increased 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 Regulation — the remark by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the variety of transistors on a modern half tendencies in direction of doubling each 18 months, since changed into a roadmap for the semiconductor business — is hitting arduous bodily limits, Intel is opting out: the present technology of NUC techniques would be the firm’s final.
