Many big tech firms are trying to convince you that cloud-based AI needs all that GPU horsepower more than your home PC. At the same time, I’ve grown more curious of a few small companies who want to propose an alternative to yet another cloud subscription. That’s where we come to the WiCi One—essentially an eGPU stapled to a lower-end PC capable of beaming graphics processing horsepower over a Wi-Fi connection. It won’t actually turn every PC in your household into the ultimate gaming rig. However, the makers are proposing the idea we could turn “personal computing” into a kind of “communal computing.”
If you’re immediately skeptical, you’re well within your rights. An external graphics processing unit (eGPU) isn’t a new idea. We’ve seen many varieties of big local computing boxes as well as mobile GPUs built for gaming, video editing, rendering, and—yes—even AI work. But all of those demand some sort of wired connection. The WiCi One instead purports to connect to your PC over Wi-Fi 7 and use a number of specially designed protocols to give you that local computing power from across the room.
Why do you need that? Perhaps if you don’t want to sit next to a giant box full of loud, steaming fans to do your work. Also, your low-end PC may not have the necessary ports to connect to another eGPU; running an eGPU also means you can save your laptop or other device battery life without having to run a mobile GPU natively.
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