The article highlights repeatedly that it's a demonstration project and only a few of these were built so raw CPU performance was likely traded off for things l

The article highlights repeatedly that it's a demonstration project and only a few of these were built so raw CPU performance was likely traded off for things like size, power consumption or branding. On the non-technical level of branding it's evoking a sense of "new" rather than "commodity" by basking in the glow of the PR dollars someone else, Intel, has spent promoting NUC. Size is highly relevant to something you are taking to a customer, it was literally built to fit in a flight case for taking on a plane. The µATX you mention is sized 24cm² through to 17cm², whereas everything I can find for Intel NUC has it at 10cm² (so smaller than Mini-ITX's 17cm² and even Nano-ITX's 12cm²). Power consumption is also an issue versus your workstation, they might have had cooling issues inside a different box. Airport baggage handlers versus the heavier heatsinks on the CPUs of an µATX solution could also be a factor. If they put fewer larger boards in there it would constrain the possible demonstrations and take away from the sense of "cloud" rather than "rack". If you look at Shuttleworth's demo[1] it's fast enough to demonstrate a number of configurations in a 30 minute window. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEYCjHCderM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEYCjHCderM