It’s the end of an era: Intel has announced that, over the next three years, it will wind down production of desktop motherboards to zero. The company will continue to supply chipsets for use by third party motherboard manufacturers—the likes of ASUS, ASRock and Gigabyte—but after 2013 it won’t make more motherboards itself, reports Anandtech. In fact, the last output from Intel will be ‘boards that accommodate its soon-to-launch Haswell architecture chips (the successor to Ivy Bridge). It’ll then wind down and not bother for its subsequent set of silicon. Instead, it will focus its efforts on creating form factor reference designs: mock-ups that are used internally for testing, but which often also end up as the base for third-party products. There won’t be any trimming here—so you can probably expect to hear of plenty of new ultrabook, tablet and desktop prototypes in the future.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with AI strategy, implementation and governance, as well as technology, media and marketing. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Technology, he is a bestselling author, covers tech and business for Fox 5’s Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN, and writes the popular daily business blog Think About This. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.