A year after taking on Intel's NUC mini-PCs, Asus says it's ready to improve them
- Reference: 1728372431
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/10/08/asus_nuc_year_one/
- Source link:
As we [1]reported in the days after Asus took on the NUC, the manufacturer hoped to think outside the 4″ x 4″ box that Intel chose as the housing for NUCs, and develop custom form factors for commercial clients.
Asus still harbors that ambition. But events across the last year made it tricky to realize – for a couple of reasons.
[2]
One was that Asus lost some members of Intel's NUC design team. Some customers also took their business elsewhere.
[3]
[4]
Asus senior vice president Jackie Hsu today told The Register the box-builder now considers its first year as the steward of NUC as its foundational effort. In its second year, innovation and growth will follow.
Some of that innovation will address the needs of orgs that want to put generative AI to work in customer-facing kiosks. NUCs are famously used in McDonald's touchscreen self-serve kiosks in Australia. Hsu said more retailers are looking for kiosks that use generative AI to handle customer inquiries with real-time conversational interfaces.
[5]
Asus's plan to develop custom NUCs remains in place and Hsu said the ambition to create such machines will be important as retailers contemplate physical designs that work on the shop floor.
[6]ASUS thinks outside the 4″ x 4″ box with plans for custom NUCs
[7]ASUS quietly built supercomputers, datacenters and an LLM. Now it's quietly selling them all together
[8]Lenovo sues Asus for patent infringement, seeks US ZenBook ban
[9]ASUS creates a substance: Ceraluminum, which fuses aluminum and a ceramic
Partnerships with Nvidia and Microsoft are in place to get accelerators and Copilot working in next-gen NUCs. The Register couldn't resist asking if Asus would contemplate using Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite processors – the only ones Microsoft currently rates as suitable for its flagship Copilot+ PCs. We were told Asus hasn't closed its partnership books.
Indeed, the newly-appointed general manager of the Asus NUC business unit, KW Chao, made clear it will consider other partners "based on customer demand."
Hsu said another source of growth for the NUC business is Asus's recent decision to reorganize two divisions that worked on servers into one. That team now targets three markets: cloud service providers, large buys such as enterprises or HPC operators, and vertical markets such as manufacturers.
The server team's focus on those markets means Asus's commercial teams have a chance to learn how to better pitch NUCs beyond traditional markets like digital signage. Asus believes its experience building [10]supercomputers and clouds means buyers will feel it can match the likes of Lenovo in terms offering stacks comprising servers, storage, and small client devices.
[11]
Hsu said the NUC is therefore opening doors for Asus's commercial sales teams – a welcome side-effect of its deal with Intel.
While the majority of NUC sales will be to commercial buyers, the small PCs' loyal gaming clientele have not been forgotten: one of Asus's first NUCs bore its Republic of Gamers brand, and Chao told The Register a sequel is in the works. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/11/asus_nuc_plans/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZwUCxReb0I4Tip_FruDwlgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZwUCxReb0I4Tip_FruDwlgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZwUCxReb0I4Tip_FruDwlgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZwUCxReb0I4Tip_FruDwlgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/11/asus_nuc_plans/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/13/asus_enterprise_tech_growth_plans/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/22/lenovo_takes_asus_to_court/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/asus_ceraluminum_amd_copilot_laptops/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/13/asus_enterprise_tech_growth_plans/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZwUCxReb0I4Tip_FruDwlgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: More is less
It can't be that hard a programming problem:
if(degree=="humanities"):
print("Do you want fries with that?")
Re: More is less
I see El Reg's PERL-based CMS hates Python and stripped the spaces!
Looks like the start of PERL's fightback...
They'd better get a move on
Quick trawl of Aliexpress and dozens of small form factor PC's (of unknown brand) jump off the screen. Few years ago it was mobile phones. Next, PC's.
Re: They'd better get a move on
But how much support are you going to get for one of them?
We've used a lot of the NUCs at work, partly because Intel has a good reputation for supporting their hardware. Whether that's warranty support for hardware, or software/firmware support that lasts for years. Plus you can almost guarantee there'll be good Linux support.
Sure, the NUCs cost more, but this is a case where you get what you pay for in terms of quality.
Hopefully Asus can keep up that reputation.
Re: They'd better get a move on
Plenty of them running on Intel … AMD … and with Windows 11
Re: They'd better get a move on
There are numerous ones listed on Amazon as well. A few months ago my daughters very old Dell SFF desktop PC failed so for a little over the price of another refurbished one I got her a brand new NUC which has better connectivity and more storage. The performance isn't massively different, but it's more than enough for her use which is general internet browsing and a few online courses for her job. It's also given her quite a bit more room in the cupboard where she has it set up, and the fact that it's a generic Chinese vendor isn't an issue to us as we got our son to reformat the SSD and install Windows 10, rather than use the image which came on the device. Works perfectly and should last for quite a few years.
Love my two Intel NUCs in my home lab running ESXi (let's not got there). Hope to see some innovation around 2.5Gbe Ethernet and > 64GB RAM (they may be available now, it's a while since I have looked). Form factor doesn't bother me, they're headless in the loft.
"real-time conversational interfaces"
Great.
We're being trained to talk to machines.
Skynet won't need to kill us, it'll talk us to death.
Re: "real-time conversational interfaces"
... Because "Genuine People Personalities" was already taken.
Re: "real-time conversational interfaces"
Yep.
Hsu said more retailers are looking for kiosks that use generative AI to handle customer inquiries with real-time conversational interfaces.
This is a load of Marketing Gobbledygook of the 1st order.
What a load of bullshite.
It means, 'we will charge you more for stuff that you won't use'.
As a NUC user (I have four of the things doing various jobs) they are nice devices because of their small size and quietness (if you get the right ones)
The last thing I need is for AI to start guessing what my NC controlled lathe is going to do and switch in the wrong tool. FSCK that for a game of soldiers.
Re: " FSCK that for a game of soldiers"
Copula hock in lido militum?
"The server team's focus on those markets means Asus's commercial teams have a chance to learn how to better pitch NUCs beyond traditional markets like digital signage."
A NUC seems over kill for digital signage as its just running a slide show of pictures or video files on a loop, something you don't need a i5 and 16GB of RAM to do. Surely a Raspberry Pi could do that for a lot less upfront cost and power usage?
"kiosks that use generative AI to handle customer inquiries"
I'm not sure you need AI to help you order a burger. I want burger. I select burger and options. I pay. I get. I eat. Where are these inquiries? Am I going to ask the kiosk the cows name?
Methinks it'll be more like "Why has this burger got pickles in it, I ordered it without pickles?" and "Why is there no option on this touchscreen to choose extra sauces? I always used to be able to ask for those!"
To which it will reply with, variously, "We're sorry for the quality control issue you've experienced today. Please fill in this form for a refund. Note: no keyboard will be provided, please "write" in the boxes and we will translate your handwriting into text" and "We're sorry for the experience you've had today. Please fill in this form to request a new feature for the kiosks. Note: no keyboard will be provided, please "write" in the boxes and we will translate your handwriting into text"
And then the OCR frustrates people with it's inaccuracies to the point where they give up and go away.
More is less
> NUCs are famously used in McDonald's touchscreen self-serve kiosks in Australia
Yet [1]it is reported: McDonald's is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new "guest experience lead" jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any issues. "In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts,"
[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/21/0212212/do-self-service-kiosks-actually-increase-employment-at-fast-food-restaurants