Intel Says It Will Stop Developing Compute Cards 42
Intel will not develop new Compute Cards, the company said this week. From a report: Compute Cards were Intel's vision of modular computing that would allow customers to continually update point of sale systems, all-in-one desktops, laptops and other devices. Pull out one card, replace it with another, and you have a new CPU, plus RAM and storage. "We continue to believe modular computing is a market where there are many opportunities for innovation," an Intel spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "However, as we look at the best way to address this opportunity, we've made the decision that we will not develop new Compute Card products moving forward. We will continue to sell and support the current Compute Card products through 2019 to ensure our customers receive the support they need with their current solutions, and we are thankful for their partnership on this change."
because they SUCKED! (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried two different version of these and they sucked bad.
Here are some examples of problems.
The biggest problem is the terrible implementation. Nothing was planned for expansion. The USB ports were limited though understandble, but often had a weird problem. The devices emitted an EMI field that prevented many wireless keyboards and mice from working. Had to get an extension usb cable or dongle to bring them far enough away from the device to function.
No flexible cabling to plug them into devices with limited profiles for their HDMI connectors and really the same for the other ports. They really should have broken out ports to allow for far more flexibility than they did. The NUC was not as bad as the Sticks because they had more surface area to work with but still found many problems with them.
Their designs just kept them down and prevented them from being as useful as they could have been.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
but still not as good as your dad does. You could probably learn a "trick" or two from him!
Re: because they SUCKED! (Score:4, Funny)
Was that YOUR dad? cause judging by the resulting child you are probably ugly as sin too, if feel sorry for ya! I don't blame you for posting as AC now!
Re:because they SUCKED! (Score:5, Informative)
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Fair point!
I am reading into the "other compute card products" as also being part of the NUC's and Sticks lineup. So yea if those are not going to to be part of that then I might be unfairly bashing the compute cards. Hopefully your post is modded up so people are not unfairly biased by my post against the Cards. Though my thoughts on NUC and Stick's still stand.
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Nothing was planned for expansion.
It looks like the worst part would be a windows based laptop or point of sale system would immediately complain that UEFI prevents the same installation booting up on an all new CPU/memory configuration.
I don't get this marketing double-speak (Score:3)
On one side of their mouth they say "We continue to believe modular computing is a market where there are many opportunities for innovation." while the other side says they will no longer develop new Compute Cards."
So, which is it Intel?
Why not just be honest and say "We couldn't compete in this market/make enough money, so we're leaving it."
I'd respect you more if you were honest.
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"We continue to believe modular computing is a market where there are many opportunities for innovation." while the other side says they will no longer develop new Compute Cards."
So, which is it Intel?
I'm not sure.... but Intel did just screw over any businesses who bought into the hardware that uses compute cards for investment protection with the expectation that the compute card model would basically guarantee future upgradeability (The major promise of modular computing!).
Can't trust that p
Re: I don't get this marketing double-speak (Score:1)
I only trust modular if there's an open standard for it so other companies could step in to pick up the business. Otherwise it's the same lock in as any non-modular product. And these days companies are very quick to drop products.
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On one side of their mouth they say "We continue to believe modular computing is a market where there are many opportunities for innovation." while the other side says they will no longer develop new Compute Cards."
So, which is it Intel?
Why not just be honest and say "We couldn't compete in this market/make enough money, so we're leaving it."
All of those things can be true at the same time.
How many passive backplane PCs have you seen? They are vanishingly rare, and consequently they come with substantial price penalties vs. ATX systems. They only make sense where space is intensely limited, or where motherboards get fried (or otherwise fail) regularly. And even then, they have to be low-power, because of power and cooling requirements. Most customers are better served by replacing whole PCs. The rest have time to swap motherboards.
The market se
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No, it isn't. Embedded systems manufacturers, specifically POS and self-checkout system makers, would love to have a click-in forward-compatible compute subsystem. They didn't adopt Intel's platform because Intel has a long history of discontinuing embedded systems platforms with very little warning and no off-ramp. This is the rule, not the exception.
It was only two years from the time Intel announced the kit until they will stop supporting them. The customer
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What they're saying is just PR speak, and probably has absolutely nothing to do with the market realities which prompted this decision. The most likely scenario is simply that someone else came into the market with a better product, and ate Intel's lunch. You don't keep making a product when nobody is buying it!
I mean, just take a look at Intel's webpage for Compute Cards [intel.com]; I don't know if this was always the case, but the specs and prices of the offerings on that page right now strongly suggests that they w
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Both can be true. Intel has over ten thousand of these cards in stock. At the current shipping rate, they will continue to sell them for the the next nine thousand or so quarters.
But these are/were basically worse than $200 low end netbooks, that cost more, and require an even more expensive dock. Essentially it is a bigger, more expensive, less useful, less portable version of Windows Continuum form the Windows phones.
If you are in an MS environment, they were and still are amazing work devices (and will
Raspberry Pi (Score:3)
...and meanwhile, the raspberry pi lives...
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Even though everyone on Slashdot says "the raspberry pi sucks!" Yeah, well, guess what? They start at $5.
This is Intel's problem in a nutshell (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel doesn't want to compete in low-margin product areas where it can only make a few dollars off each sale. Intel wants to sell expensive desktop and laptop processors where it is the only supplier, and rake in the profits. That is the market that made Intel what it is today, and is also very clearly the type of business that its current management wants to pursue. Managing a low-margin product line must be career suicide at Intel.
This is why Intel abandoned the IoT and the Arduino-style computer markets (e.g. the Galileo). There's no money to be made in them (by their standards). I accepted some donated Galileo boards from Intel, and tried in vain for months to get them to provide some additional parts. Every few months when I emailed an engineer, he had moved on to another department within Intel. The Galileo product line had the stench of death on it from the very beginning.
Re:This is Intel's problem in a nutshell (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel doesn't want to compete in low-margin product areas where it can only make a few dollars off each sale. Intel wants to sell expensive desktop and laptop processors where it is the only supplier, and rake in the profits.
Actually, the real money is in the server market. Low-end desktops don't rake in much cash either but the high-end ones are far more profitable.
Intel is really killing everything that isn't a real money maker because they are losing money on them due to that fact that there is real competition in these sectors from non-x86 chips. Intel is suffering mostly because of their (relatively) high prices and fierce NDA policies which drive people to competitors.
Intel's real innovation has always been in anti-competitive behavior so when they are unable to rig the game, they fold.
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It's an indirect effect. NDAs ensure that hobbyist communities (which are basically free advertisement, support and software development) are DOA. Being well supported is what really matters, so the onus falls entirely on the chip maker. Generally chip makers have really shitty support compared to communities and Intel is no exception.
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Which is unfortunate. I would much prefer standard x86 ISA in a Pi form factor (at similar price point of course) over ARM. I'm tired of dealing with custom linux distros with random binary blobs, and oddball boot loaders. Even if U-Boot is fairly ubiquitous it's not easy like sticking a usb stick in a PC and telling it to boot it to install Linux.
No long ago I replaced my little ARM-based router computer with a much more expensive but tiny Intel computer (not a NUC, it's even smaller). It is just easie
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But there really isn't money in IoT or Arduino. Look at all the Arduino copies that are out there and the plethora of raspberry pi clones. At $35, raspberry pi is not making much money. The Chinese are creating tons of cheap clones, can't compete with that. Why waste time, energy, money, resources on low profit when they can focus on high profit markets?
ALL of Intel's x86 chips are fatally faulty... (Score:1)
Remember Netburst- the dreadful Intel x86 architecture all tech sites (including this one) promised readers were the only future - especially since Intel promised to hit 10GHz with its very long pipeline design?
The shilling hid the fact that netburst was a disaster- which Intel could no longer hide when AMD invented x64 and true dual core x64 chips. Intel went back to the Pentium 3 design, crossed it with the best AMD had (legal via cross patent agreements), and made the 'winning' multicore 'Core 2' (now Co
They made a product for easy upgrades (Score:2)
Translation (Score:2)
we Thank for their buying all new systems due to this change.