NUC: Intel's Unusually Named Little Laptops Appear To Be Disappearing

Intel representative Imprint Walton said that Intel had "chose to stop direct interest in the Following Unit of Register (NUC) Business and turn our procedure to empower our environment accomplices to proceed with NUC development and development." This assertion leaves some leeway — Intel may as yet work with accomplices to put up NUCs or NUC-like items for sale to the public — however it seems like the times of Intel planning its own PCs are finished.

Additionally, Walton stated that Intel intended to maintain "ongoing support for NUC products currently in the market." As a result, it appears that owners of existing NUC systems will continue to be able to obtain warranty support in addition to driver and BIOS updates for the foreseeable future.

The first NUC was released at a time when Intel was putting a lot of effort into its then-new "ultrabook" initiative. It was built on a third-generation Intel Core chip with the Ivy Bridge architecture. In response to Apple's MacBook Air, Intel gave PC companies a portion of a $300 million fund to create new laptops that combined low-voltage but relatively high-performance processors, quick solid-state storage, and thin and light designs devoid of legacy components like built-in DVD drives. After twelve years, you actually see the ultrabook assignment threw around a little, however MacBook Air-style PCs have so completely assumed control over the versatile PC market that an "ultrabook" and a "typical PC" are pretty much undefined as a rule.

The NUC aimed to replace boxy, unattractive office desktops with something you could hold in your hand by bringing the speed, size, and low power consumption of an ultrabook into the desktop realm. Although NUC-style mini PCs did not conquer the desktop market like ultrabooks did, the NUC is still supported by a large ecosystem of similarly small PCs, many of which are ultimately cheaper and simpler to purchase than the majority of NUCs. The Optiplex Micro from Dell, the ThinkCentre Tiny from Lenovo, the ProDesk and EliteDesk Mini systems from HP, the Brix systems from Gigabyte, a number of models from PC motherboard manufacturers like Asus and ASRock, and Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio are among the models.

The company has had a few difficult quarters since the end of the PC boom during the pandemic, losing billions of dollars in its consumer, workstation, and server businesses. This is at least partially why the NUC was discontinued. In response, the business has already implemented layoffs and reduced executive compensation, and in April, it announced plans to sell its pre-built server business.