Project "Raspberry Pi" with aim to launch a viable - world's smallest yet cheapest computing platform has a new rival. It seems citing the traction gained by "Raspberry Pi", Intel has now unveiled there own plans to launch a ultra-portable PC hardware - Intel's ultra-small "Next Unit of Computing" (NUC) PC.

Intel's NUC is a complete computer, featuring a Sandy Ivy Bridge Core i3/i5 CPU, Thunderbolt, HDMI, and USB 3.0 ports, two laptop memory slots, two mini PCIe headers - all nicely tucked into a portable 4x4 inches motherboard assembly. Since, this is not a final product and not much is know about it - speculations have that the Intel NUC won't be as cheap as "Raspberry Pi" but should retail at approximately $100-$300 range and is expected to arrive in the second half of the year.

If you liked the Plug and boot USB Stick Computer here is something you would absolutely love - a credit-card sized, ultra-low-cost (~15GBP or 25USD), portable computing device capable of playing 1080p30 H.264 video, audio, OpenGL ES 2.0, HDMI output, USB, SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot, 700MHz Broadcom media processor (having an ARM11 core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM), 128/256 MB RAM, 100MBit Ethernet, and a number of I/O pins for a serial port and other custom expansion.

A working Raspberry Pi Beta Board video demonstration booting into OS, playing 1080p Video, audio and games while connected to a standard HDMI TV.