Computers have to continue to evolve, it is inevitable that their conventional form factor is disappearing – we prove it in sales – leaving space to mobile devices and concepts that are transformed, some, with certain doses of modularity. There are several projects today that we must follow, such as the case of Superbook, or the one at hand, NexDock.
It is something more recent than it seems, we see that operating systems like Windows 10 or Android encourage engineers to put the hardware in all kinds of gadgets, making design work more flexible. In the case of the Microsoft system, we even find complete versions, with which we can do anything we would do on the desktop.
NexDock is an accessory, but it really is a laptop that lacks the brain. Well, you have brains since it has been devised so that we can connect a mobile, another computer, a tablet, or a Raspberry Pi plate. In some cases it will make screen, main, in other secondary, but always offering the comfortable control of a laptop: keyboard and trackpad.
Intel Compute Card Enters Scene
The Intel Compute Card is really small for its possibilities: 94.5x55x5 millimeters.
The new thing they have to offer is a version of NexDock to which we can introduce a Compute Card, the latest in Intel’s minimal developments.
For those who do not know the device say that it is all a miniaturized x86 computer to fit in the size of a credit card. Intel took it to CES 2017 as a great promise, but we were waiting to meet a manufacturer who dared to use it.
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It is a reality that Intel was long passed the business of mobile phones, so do not take away all kinds of gadgets that bloom, to generate the hardware that will give them life. In recent months, we have seen important solutions for the Internet of Things, also in making smaller – and economical – their usual architectures.
As you can see in the images, the “card computer” is inserted by a side of the NexDock, without cables by means, and is that the Intel Compute Card presumes to have a special connection system called USB-C plus extension : There goes the data and the food.
In a thickness of only 5 millimeters, which is the thinnest size that a Windows PC could have, we have a processor, a graphics processing unit, RAM, storage, and the necessary circuitry to perform wireless connectivity.
On the right side of the NexDock we will have the slot for the Intel card, but the other will have a modular system that proposes different profiles and possibilities of use, with additional battery, new ports, or better hardware. Obviously, support for systems such as Raspberry, Android, Windows with Continuum, or Maru OS is still maintained.
When it goes on sale? We’d better ask ourselves when we’re going to see the actual finished product, that for now there are only recreations. Its developers say they have to wait until the middle of the year to see the birth of the Intel Compute Card, and they will soon be on the market.
