As Anand mentioned, what's important right now is that it is out there. Right now Intel needs to focus on the fact not only is it something they will support, but also set a baseline of what the expected feature set should be.

Currently, it doesn't look half bad. It will be interesting what the platform will be capable of not only as the chip set, many i/o functions, and other features currently off-die become part of the cpu, but also as low-power chips evolve. Sure, You may not game on an HD4000 or maybe even Haswell GT3...it may be relegated to more simple video tasks and serve a very specific user base, but as we move forward, we're not far away (meaning probably 5-6 years from the power of upcoming consoles) from some form of a system like this being enough to have a full-fledged experience...gaming and all. It's kind of ridiculous when you think about it...how far we've come.

If the form-factor becomes an accepted standard, odds are prices will fall substantially as all the pieces, most which are more-or-less specialized currently and expensive for what they are, become more of a commodity. When that day comes, it won't be a silly little trinket you compare to a laptop without a screen, it will be a customized and upgradable media center/port and device hub the size of a phone you can take with you wherever you go and use with any random display device along the way...and that is just freaking rad.

" turtle: Right now Intel needs to focus on the fact not only is it something they will support, but also set a baseline of what the expected feature set should be. "

agreed, what is it with Intel anyway, we have known for years their Thunderbolt port IP came with 4 possible ports internally and that its in effect talking to the next device in the FB chain over a virtual PCIe bus and yet we still only get a poultry One Thunderbolt port on PC's years later, you need 2 at the very least so you can daisy chain the devices together.

its like they don't want you to actually buy it and so make Thunderbolt a real world standard.

and why have they still not written the generic Ethernet over Thunderbolt drivers given for instance that their other interesting card is the Knight's Corner Co-Processor that uses vanilla TCP/IP over PCIe internally to/from all its cores.

so put these NC's in your Thunderbolt equipped desktop and talk to the other daisy chained Thunderbolt devices like this with Ethernet over Thunderbolt drivers , its so obvious , why dont Intel write the damn thing and mandate 2 daisy chained Thunderbolt ports per Intel device peripheral from now on,you cant make a standard by price gouging to start with (that comes later like apple) you know Intel should be doing a "special buy one Thunderbolt part get one free type of offer to the OEM's"

http://semiaccurate.com/2...rchitecture-at-long-last/
"KC has an OS running on it, in this case it is a single Linux image per chip. Larrabee and Knights Ferry, the architecture that preceded KC, used a BSD based OS. The OS runs can be SSH’d to, and can run code just like a standalone CPU, but most users won’t use it in that way. That OS is presented with an interface that looks like a standard TCP/IP software stack, but there is no reason why it could not be hardware based in the future. If you have multiple KC cards in a server, they tunnel vanilla TCP/IP over PCIe.

In case it isn’t obvious, the standard way to do clustering on a rack of PC servers is with MPI, and that uses TCP/IP to talk between nodes."

ohh i see down voted as its too complicated to comprehend perhaps , these NUC are billed as special purpose and price, so Thunderbolt port x2 + generic Ethernet over Thunderbolt drivers = daisy chained generic (up to)10 gigabit TCP/IP Ethernet speed between all Thunderbolt connected (NUC and DT)PC's

if TCP/IP Ethernet over USB with the existing generic Linux USB-eth interface was good enough for the old mobile iPAQ back in the day http://en.wikipedia.org/w...SB_as_an_Ethernet_network

then why would you not want and demand a free windows/Linux driver that gives you up to 10 gigabit TCP/IP Ethernet speed between all Thunderbolt connected PC's today given the current price gouging of all Thunderbolt kit today

For the love of GOD, people WTF, is wrong with you PPL?

when amd does that you say ahh lame CPU with mediocre GPU, although we all know that AMD GPU beats the **** out of INTEL HD 4000, and dual cores clocked at 1.8GHz, is an ATOM disguised as i3 to suit your pleasure.

you can do the same with AMD it will cheaper, better, and can be silent:

http://www.pcper.com/news...Silent-PC-AMD-Trinity-APU

Also AMD E-450 motherboard + APU costs 110USD and i personally handled that APU, and let me tell you something it can game and perform great, just stupid Intel marketing for stupid people.

No USB 3.0 support on this? For that much you'd expect USB 3.0 support.

I don't understand the use-case for this. Selling bare-bones systems is for people who tinker and can build their own, and people like that will know enough to want to build something more capable.

I can see selling something like this all wrapped up with software in a scenario where you take it home, open the box and plug it in.

Even if I would like to have computers that small I am completely unable to imagine a case where these Intel NUCs could be useful. You either do want to connect these computers to a display, or you don't. In the first case you need either double-link DVI or DisplayPort to connect a decent monitor. HDMI is limited to 1080 vertical lines, so it is usable only by brainwashed consumers who never read anything lengthy on their computers, so that they believe that the television screens, which have replaced during the last 5-6 years the earlier real computer monitor screens, are good enough as computer displays. For someone who only watches movies or plays games, HDMI would be good enough, but then audio would be needed. In the second case, when you do not use a display, you normally would need at least 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports. So these Intel barebones are not usable in either case.

a new form factor is in the work. Intel designed one should it be call NIC for next in tel computing. AMD might as well get one up soon or that nic/nuc will not work with amd APU. amd needs one call NAC for next amd computing with it APU just make sure it has double the cores of nic/nuc the consumer will go for more cores just like the current desktop version. knowing amd 8 cores is slow as a turtle but to get my virtualbox server up i will have to get that 8 cores 8350 in the next few months after i get enough $ for it.