A new roadmap, supposedly leaked from Intel, shows the chip giant continuing to push its NUC (New Unit of Computing) platform — but that systems based on Broadwell won’t arrive until the very end of the year. That fits with what we’ve heard about a delay for the 14nm chip in general, but there’s no plan to bring a socketed version of Broadwell to market for desktop users. Supposedly Intel will do a Haswell refresh this year (still compatible with existing Haswell motherboards), then a new desktop chip launch in 2015.
I firmly believe that the people haven’t fallen out of love with the PC, but instead they’ve grown bored of the form-factors on offer. While Smartphones, tablets, and even notebook systems have grown lighter and thinner, desktop PCs are still big hulking boxes that take up lots of desk space. At one time it looked like the all-in-one, which combines the PC into the display, might take over as the leading for factor, but outside of the Mac ecosystem, all-in-one systems are pretty thin on the ground. Enter the NUC, of “Next Unit of Computing.” The NUC is a series of small form factor PC designed by Intel. The first NUC, which was based on the Sandy Bridge Celeron CPU, was released early last year and since then we’ve seen a second generation system based on the Ivy Bridge Core i3 and Core i5 processors, and a third generation based on the Haswell architecture. The design is a cross between Apple’s Mac mini and the Raspberry Pi.