These mourning the discontinuation of Intel’s quirky little Subsequent Unit of Compute (NUC) mini-PCs can relaxation simple – Asus has formally taken over improvement of the product line. It is not unique, although, and already there’s competitors.
“Beginning September 1st, NUC turns into a proud member of the Asus product lineup, setting off on an exhilarating journey forward,” the Taiwanese electronics vendor wrote in a tweet – or is it xeet?
The announcement comes after Intel introduced it was phasing out the methods as a part of sweeping cost-cutting measures throughout the x86-giant’s portfolio. On the time, Chipzilla mentioned it was handing the reins of NUC improvement over to its ecosystem companions.
Not lengthy after, Asus emerged because the seemingly new shepherd of the NUC flock. In July, Intel revealed it was entertaining a “time period sheet” with Asus for an settlement to fabricate, promote, and help Tenth- by means of Thirteenth-gen NUC {hardware} and develop future NUC system designs.
Intel’s NUC portfolio acquired its begin in 2013 with a compact 4-inch by 4-inch system sporting laptop computer chips and a few unpopulated SODIMMs. Within the decade since, the road incessantly took on odd type elements and have units that catered to all the pieces from pushing PDFs to gaming, edge, and IoT purposes.
And from the appears of it, they’re all nonetheless there – simply offered and supported by Asus. The PC-maker’s NUC product web page shows a diffusion of acquainted designs, which is smart given the settlement disclosed in July stipulated supporting older NUC {hardware}.
Welcome to the free market
Nevertheless, Asus does not have a monopoly on mini-PCs and definitely not over the NUC model. The “proposed settlement” from July is non-exclusive, and the footnotes on Asus’s NUC product web page point out that is nonetheless the case. In accordance with Intel, the chipmaker “retains possession of the expertise and will license to others.”
Asrock Industrial, as an example, provides NUC-branded PCs. And, as you may count on, none of those methods are sporting AMD or Arm processors.
Asrock additionally provides non-Intel, not-NUCs, which it calls “4×4 BOX”. Nevertheless, Intel instructed The Reg the NUC model is not trademarked – so anybody is free to make use of it. Almost definitely Asrock’s decisions are right down to clients figuring out the NUC model with Intel.
For these extra within the type issue than what it is referred to as, Asrock this week demoed a tiny mini-PC powered by AMD’s 7040-series cell processors.
The 4″x4″ sq. motherboard homes an AMD Ryzen 7040U-series cell processor with as much as 8 cores and 16 threads – Click on to enlarge
The ever-so-creatively named 4×4 BOX 7040U will be specced with both a 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7640U or an 8-core/16 thread Ryzen 7 7840U. The APUs – what AMD likes to name its CPUs with onboard GPUs – come outfitted with Radeon 760M or 780M graphics, respectively. In the meantime, each configurations will be kitted out with as much as 64GB of DDR5 5600MT/sec SODIMM reminiscence, and have AMD’s Ryzen AI accelerator.
The latter delivers 10 TOPS of inferencing efficiency to hurry up issues like web-cam framing, background results, or to make it seem like you are truly trying on the digicam while you’re actually doom scrolling social media throughout a Zoom name.
Whereas the system will be had in a well-recognized NUC-inspired chassis, these trying to deploy the system in an industrial or embedded surroundings can go for a naked bones motherboard. Sadly, costs for both of the 2 configs weren’t listed on the time of publication, however from what we have seen in different industrial boards and PCs, they in all probability will not come low-cost. ®
