Xi3 model X5A

The desktop is generally a boring place, stuffed with thick, noisy, energy-sucking devices that sit all day and take up valuable desktop space.  Of course, without these devices, business across the world would come to a standstill as just about everything in business relies somehow on people sitting behind their keyboards and interfacing with their individual devices.  In recent years, CIOs, intent on bringing down desktop-related costs while also improving the ability to manage the sometimes chaotic desktop environment, have seriously explored the world of VDI.  Many have found great success in their virtual vision while others have been met with something less than complete success.

At the same time, there are any number of small desktop devices out there and even the fat desktop systems have plummeted in price, victims of the “race to the bottom” approach that desktop PC vendors have taken, resulting in some major players simply exiting the desktop market altogether.  Even as PCs have become commoditized, organizations everywhere continue to adhere to desktop replacement cycles, often for warranty and support reasons; it can become expensive to continue to support unsupported machines.  However, some companies still need to be able to add new features and processing power every so often at the desktop, so there is often technical justification for these replacement cycles, too.

Fortunately Xi3 Corporation has made it their mission to “re-imagine the traditional computer to a completely new, universal, energy efficient, cost-effective modular computer design.”  Their system is actually a conglomeration of three separate modules that come together to complete the whole.

Xi3 architecture

• Processing module.  Each system has a module that holds the processor and system memory.  By separating this module, companies can very easily upgrade just the processor and RAM at a later date.
• Two I/O board module slots.  These modules handle all of the devices I/O connectivity needs.  You will see some example modules described below.

With this modular architecture, Xi3 indicates that the company can help organizations save money in upgrade costs and can also create customer architectures for specific vertical needs, such as those that might be found in the world of healthcare.  You can see the results of the company’s efforts in the image at the top of this post. They’ve created a cube-shaped full-features desktop PC with solid state storage, plenty of USB ports, DVI, Ethernet, audio, and more and jammed it into a cube that’s 4.0 x 3.656 x 3.656 inches square.  In this model, dubbed the “5 series”, the unit contains:

• A single or dual core processing module.
• An I/O board with 2 x eSATA 2.5 Ports, 6 x USB 2.0 Ports (root hubs), 3 x Reconfigurable Audio channels, and a 16 GB flash drive, which can be expanded up to 128 GB.
• A secondary I/O board sports a gigabit Ethernet port, a DVI display port, and a power connector.  An HDMI port is optional.

Depending on the processor selected the Model 5 uses anywhere from 8 to 20 watts of power, which isn’t bad at all.

As for pricing, the X5A starts at $499.  For a reasonably equipped machine with a 64 GB SSD and Windows 8 Pro preinstalled, you’re looking at a list price of $756.

X7A

This is just one model in the Xi3 family of products.  The company also has a higher end desktop cube named the X7A, which boasts a 3.2GHz quad-core x86-based CPU, a Radeon 7000 series GPU w/384 programmable cores, up to 1TB of SSD storage, triple monitor support: 2 Mini DP, 1 HDMI/DisplayPort combo and 12 I/O ports (four eSATAp III, four USB 3.0, and four USB 2.0).  That’s not bad for a space so small.  Pricing for the X7A will start at $999 for a unit with a quad core CPU, a 64 GB SSD and Linux.

In my discussions with the company at Interop, I was shown a full custom rack of their cube-shaped machines.  At such a small size, it’s possible to achieve high levels of density, which can make Xi3’s products a good fit when scale out needs are supreme.  In fact, in their marketing materials, Xi3 indicates that they “…allow for multiple processing cores to be linked together as one powerful supercomputer.”

Personally, although the unit is not bottom of the barrel when it comes to pricing, I see it having a unique niche for a number of different uses:

• Education.  Computer labs where space is a premium and VDI is not an option.
• Home.  Small computer, quiet.
• Home theatre.  Again, small and quiet.
• General desktop use.  Regain some desktop space by ditching the huge tower and moving to these little cubes.

The pricing for the units is certainly not terrible, especially since these are list prices; it’s almost certain that there is some discount to be had.  For more information about Xi3 and their products, visit here.