We disclosed internally today that Intel's Desktop Motherboard Business will begin slowly ramping down over the course of the next three years. As Intel gradually ramps down its motherboard business we are ramping up critical areas of the desktop space including integration of innovative solutions for the PC ecosystem such as reference design development, NUC and other areas to be discussed later.
The internal talent and experience of twenty years in the boards business (which until recently has been largely focused on desktop tower type designs) is being redistributed to address emerging new form factors -- desktop and mobile - and to expand Intel's Form Factor Reference Design (FFRD) work and enable our partners to develop exciting new computing solutions.
The Desktop segment continues to be a major focus for Intel with hundreds of products across many subsegments and applications. Intel expects the broad and capable DT motherboard ecosystem (ie Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and many others) to fully support Intel's growing roadmap and large worldwide customer base. Intel's Desktop Motherboard Business will not develop any new Intel branded desktop motherboards after completion of Haswell-based 4th gen Core launch products in 2013 and will continue to support all products sold through the warranty period included with the specific product.
As someone who has covered our boards a while I wanted to let you know the below info about that group that was announced internally here today. This is resource reallocation and alignment to new and emerging form factors and designs, and NUC sticks around for sure. It is good news in that there is a robust ecosystem of board vendors in your friends at Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.... Also in that these great board engineers we have are moving to cool new form factors where board expertise is even more vital - small form factors, Ultrabook, desktop AIO etc...
