MODULARIT Y: THE PC’S NEX T BIG BREAKTHROUGH
Intel has a bold vision of the future, predicting a modular approach that takes advantage of superfast connections
The biggest breakthrough in home and business computing came with the launch of IBM’s Personal Computer in 1981. Not because of the machine itself, but because IBM opted to make it from commercial, off-the-shelf parts – something that would come to be known as “open architecture”.
Many of the companies that cut their teeth on IBM compatibles have fallen by the wayside, but open architecture is still a thing. Whichever firm made your PC, it almost certainly has a processor from AMD or Intel, a graphics processor from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia, and storage that connects over a SATA or NVMe interface.
The future’s modular…
There’s a movement to make things even more modular than they already are, though – and one of the companies at the forefront is Intel. “The Systems Group is more of a unique part of Intel, we’re all about innovating around and developing new form factors,” Intel’s Ed Barkhuysen told PC Pro. “And thus far, primarily, the innovation has been around small form factors like the Intel NUC mini PC.”
Primarily, but not exclusively: in 2017, Intel unveiled the Compute Card, a computer-on-module (COM) slightly larger than a credit card that holds the key components of a computer: CPU, graphics, storage, and even Wi-Fi network hardware.
Using the Compute Card, Intel promised, companies would be able to design embedded, portable or ultra small form factor (USFF) systems that could be easily upgraded: when its next-generation processors are released, simply pop out the old Compute Card and slot a new one in its place. It was even suggested that office workers could pop a Compute Card in their pocket at the end of the day, slot it into a dock at home, and then carry on where they left off.
…or is it?
Unfortunately, the Compute Card didn’t exactly take the world by storm. Earlier this year Intel confirmed it was to cease production of the design, but it’s not abandoning its vision for a modular future. “Sometimes we know that the products that we bring out initially are going to evolve over time, and we’ll be listening to our customers, taking on board their feedback, and responding to that with new products,” Barkhuysen explained. “There will be modular products coming out from Intel, certainly for the foreseeable future. You know, we anticipate that that modular strategy could be a key part of our business strategy moving forward.
“The benefits and the values [of modularity] – the full integration, the serviceability, the upgradability – are all key values which I think we’re going to be seeing a little bit more broadly over the industry over the next few years.
“It’s something we’ve been working on for a couple of years,” Intel’s Barkhuysen concluded, “and we have some new products coming out later this year, again, to enable people to have a little bit more choice around that.”
“Performance is leagues ahead of the lower-power parts that make their way into mini PCs and other small form factor systems”
Bringing the inside out
Intel isn’t the only company investigating modularity, though. Both computer-on-module and the slightly more cut-down system-onmodule (SOM) form factors are common in the world of embedded systems, while companies have recently jumped on the bandwagon of external graphics processing units, or EGPUs.
Where a traditional graphics processing unit is housed in the system chassis, either as part of the CPU or as a discrete add-in board connected to the PCI Express bus, an EGPU sits in its own dedicated housing. The connectivity back to the main system takes place on a highspeed peripheral interconnect, typically Intel’s Thunderbolt 3, which includes native PCI Express lanes, and while performance isn’t quite the same as having the GPU connected internally it’s still leagues ahead of the lowerpower parts that make their way into mini PCs and other small form factor systems.
The announcement that Thunderbolt 3 now forms the basis of the upcoming USB 4 standard, “so that when that standard comes in there will already be a range of ecosystem products which are ready,” Barkhuysen points out, may be the catalyst EGPU technology needs to go mainstream – though if you find yourself dangling too many external boxes off your mini PC, buying a larger device may have been a better and cheaper choice.