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  • Amandtec - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    The same thing can kind of be achieved with virtual desktop. All I imagine is asking a client if I can plug by card into one of their computers and watching in horror as all hell breaks lose because their IT guy thinks I am trying to hack them or something. Impressive engineering but it has no good use case in business or personal use scenarios.
  • jtd871 - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    Move over ECS: let AsRock have a go at this form factor. Seriously, it wouldn't be too difficult to put the base card in a textured machined or extruded aluminum shell with more heat dissipation potential. It should also be possible to update the guts to a more modern and lower-power SOC to help with thermals. Unfortunately, Ian, it's a niche and proprietary product: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11019/intel-compute...
  • Ket_MANIAC - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    Zotac showed it off at Computex this year. Seriously AnandTech, you are falling behind. Look for the Zotac P series.
  • jordanclock - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    The P series isn't quite the same. That is a complete package, including I/O. The compute card has no I/O, except to interface with some kind of enclosure to provide user interactivity.
  • Ket_MANIAC - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    So how is it innovative and functional when other companies have better working actual products of your "still to be released concepts"? IMO another handicapped Intel brand.
  • FanlessTech - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    It's a really cool idea but Intel's Compute Stick previously bombed for a reason. Pocketable PCs are a gimmick.

    Sure the Compute Card is different (and actually smarter) but it's also so more complex to use and deploy. And poor thermals again?

    The Core-Y is an absolute MARVEL at 5W TDP. It could power amazing (and actually usable without docks and dongles) NUC-sized fanless PCs if it wasn't so expensive.
  • Araemo - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    My first reaction: Huh, that'd be kinda neat.

    My second reaction: all my use cases are stupid.

    "I could use that to have a secure PC I log into my bank from wherever I go", but really: I could never trust the dock to not have a keylogger built in. Or a display image capture device.

    It'd be a lot like using a kiosk PC somewhere to do something secure, but with all of the avenues for exploit hidden in the hardware, nothing software-detectable. Sure, it removes one layer of possible exploits (software-based), but you could never actually trust these to be secure. If you just want your gaming pc on a card.. cool.... except the form factor prevents it from having any high power cpu/gpu.
  • jordanclock - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    I think there is something to be said for business uses. Moving this between a corporate and home dock could allow for safe transportation of all data, even your OS, in something smaller than a laptop. I could personally use something like this because I do almost all my work at the office but occasionally work from home. My laptop is almost always at the office.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    I can't see many situations in which this would make more sense than a laptop, though. At least there you can work wherever you can set the thing down. This limits you to whichever locations already have a dock set up. In the meantime all that extra kit (monitor, keyboard, mouse) is completely useless until the card is docked. If you wanted to dual-use it with an actual home PC then you'd need to splurge on a KVM, too.
  • dullard - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    I think you are looking at it backwards. I agree that the use cases for a home user usually fall apart. But think about it from a business standpoint. Instead of expensive serving/upgrading kiosks for a new purpose, just pull out a card, slip in the new card and you have a whole new product. I don't think these will take off if they are user accessible. But, if they are technician accessible, then I see many use cases.

    Here is another company using them: https://www.dtx.com/files/documents/product-data/C...
  • cekim - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    VMs make sense if you have good connectivity and can handle latency. I think the mismatch between this idea and the market is that the applications where it makes sense to have a discrete PC with power beyond that which a Raspberry Pi can provide also require more graphics, ram and storage than such a solution can provide at present. It's too big to be small and too small to be big.

    If/when GPUs shrink down to this foot-print, the perennial problem of cloud gaming goes away. However, GPUs still have not reached the point where giant power sucking max aperture dies can't still provide noticeable improvements to the user experience. You can get away with a low-end CPU and game (graphic/latency sensitive games), but not a low-end GPU.

    Make a compute card that can realistically replace a Game Console and you've got something...
  • Computer Bottleneck - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    I really like this idea and concept, but I think it would be better with a laptop housing.
  • Alexvrb - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    Agreed. Something like HP's MeDock but not overpriced. Make it an open standard so there's competition. A shell with a display and battery should be like $100-300 depending on how large and how fancy (display/chassis quality, touchscreen, etc). Could even have various sizes of tablet form factor shells! I think this was a missed opportunity... or maybe they just didn't want to piss off OEMs that sell traditional machines.
  • thrawn3 - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    These already make tons of sense for kiosks which I think has been mentioned but in an ideal world I think that TVs should have a standard docking option that can use either one of these Compute Cards or a Raspberry Pi and have all smart TVs be required to use that option. How stupid is it to have a TV that can be bricked with a software issue or even just that the "smart" features get outdated in a fraction of the time the display is good for.
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    Yeah "smart" TVs are terrible. In addition to the issues you mentioned, they can also become a security risk. Most of the manufacturers out there absolutely suck at security, and on top of that they don't update them forever. Better to have a swappable card or an external box, preferably something supported for a long time with heavy emphasis on security.
  • Wardrop - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    If implemented correctly, these could be the future of all-in-one type devices. If they managed to get the performance close to a normal corporate desktop, I imagine every desk just having a monitor (with slot for computer card) and keyboard and mouse. Would make rollouts and troubleshooting a breeze.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    Long-term support, on the other hand...

    "Yes, helpdesk? I washed / lost / ran over / my dog ate my compute card. We have a backup of all the data I had stored in that one location though, right?"

    Unfortunately it rapidly becomes a terrible idea when you think about how actual, non-techy users will interact with it.
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    I'm not reading his post the same way you are. I don't think he intends for them to be removable by anyone but IT. You could even physically secure them (lock) to the monitor/dock they attach to, so they can't just slip it in their pocket.
  • sgeocla - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    In these small form factors I doubt very much that they can compete with ARM. Even running the Windows on ARM version and in the same power envelope the performance difference would not be that high, especially when comparing ARM 7nm vs Intel 14nm+++.
    The price would also be much lower for ARM version, helping broad market adoption.
  • fteoath64 - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    Only reason Intel is pushing this is because of x86, thus Windows compatibility. If using Linux or Android, it has no chance against Arm!. Thats clear in terms of both price and performance. One can tell a SnapDragon 835 in it, kills the Intel part instantly!.
  • edzieba - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    If you're hooking up a Compute Card to a monitor and KB&M, then you're missing the entire point. The purpose of the Compute Card is to be a standard form-factor for integration into other devices (e.g. the control computer for a tunneling microscope, the computer in a an ATM, etc) using a standard interface. The idea is that it allows what would otherwise be a static platform to be easily swapped out, avoiding the current issue where unsupported legacy platforms cling to operation because they're stuck to a device that has a longer lifetime.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, June 24, 2018 - link

    Two problems with this:

    1. If it's an Intel standard, that makes it unlike there'll be ARM versions.

    2. Device makers don't have an incentive to embrace this, because it cuts out a significant part of their product and thus reduces selling prices. Lower selling prices -> less profit. And they have developed the capability to design and support their own embedded PCs, which means it'll face internal resistance. Worse yet, unless the compute cards become utter commodity items, the price of a device that supports them will probably go *up*, once you add in the cost of the card, itself.

    The only way something like this gets momentum is if it's embraced by a bunch of upstart device makers, without a bunch of legacy. Then, the market could shift and you might see enough demand from customers to push other device makers to follow.

    But I still think it'd be more compelling if it weren't coming from Intel, but rather a non-architecture specific industry consortium.

    Finally, I don't know how good these things would be for robotics, but that's another application where I could see it being useful.
  • Gunbuster - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link

    Would be a great solution for powering auto infotainment/nav/gauge clusters systems but they will never let that happen and kill one of their big profit centers.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, June 24, 2018 - link

    Yes, that's basically my point.
  • roomN - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link

    Some time ago I was very excited about Asus PadFone X - a smartphone which can be put into a tablet monitor. I thought it would have been great to be able to choose between those two screen sizes depending only on your current situation - what you can carry with you and the work you need to do with it.
    Now, I see the same idea at a much more mature level - Compute Card. You can put it into whatever screen you have.
    It's a shame that people are so blind about new possibilities...
  • lazysummer7 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Anyone had a look at this https://addc.net/products/biodigitalpc-11/

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