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Intel Says It Will Stop Developing Compute Cards
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."
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.
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.