First disclosed by Xi3 Corp. in 2009, the ChromiumPC is a version of the company’s Xi3 Modular Computer™ which was formally unveiled in 2010 and named by the Consumer Electronics Association as an Innovations Award Winner in the Computer Hardware category for the 2011 International CES trade show.
“The Xi3 Computer Architecture is designed to support any x86-based operating system, including Windows, Linux, Unix, and other open source-based operating systems,” said Jason A. Sullivan, president and CEO of Xi3 Corp. “Although we’ve been promoting, discussing and working on modular computers for some time, we feel the market is now ready for a desktop computer with a cloud-based operating system like the one offered by Google. If someone chooses to switch their ChromiumPC to run a different operating system, it’s as easy as swapping out one of the three boards inside the computer.
“Historically, the vast majority of operating systems have been installed and run locally on computers. But as technology has advanced and people have become more and more comfortable with using Web-based applications and storing data away from their computer, specifically ‘in the cloud,’ it only makes sense that operating systems will become cloud-based. In fact, we expect that over time we’ll see many operating systems that are wire-bound and require the computer to be connected to the Internet to run, and we will likely support these new operating systems as well.”