Stefan Mileschin

One of the more interesting and innovative platforms that Intel has introduced over the past few years was the Compute Card: a small credit-card like platform that contained a CPU, some memory, some storage, and a connector such that the card could be placed into all manner of docks and displays for a universal homogenous experience. The Compute Card arrived with much fanfare, but since then I have not heard much about it, let alone see one in real life. That changed with a visit to ECS at Computex.

ECS is one of Intel’s biggest engineering and manufacturing partners, taking on a lot of the Intel branded product contracts, such as the NUC. On display at their booth was the Intel Compute Card platform in two variants: first, a dock embedded in a touch screen display, and second as a dock that could be connected to a display. It’s that second one that interested me most.

Because the Compute Card is small, and super thin (it’s difficult to get over just how thin it is), the idea that you can take almost a full x86 computer with you to different points is pretty crazy. This is the point where someone mentions a smartphone, which I concede, but the Compute Card is so much smaller. The base design has either a Core-Y series processor or an Atom processor inside, and the dock provides the additional cooling and extension to things like networking, display, and USB. It’s like putting a credit card in a DVD drive hooked up to a monitor.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12986...s-compute-card