struftepete1, It's really difficult to speculate how this would work since I have not seen Glassware in person nor do not know how it works behind the covers except at a very high level made available in marketing material. What I do know is that local mode access is a big deal (think of loss of productivity if network connectivity fails) and that Sphere 3D's competitors already have some sort of solution in place for this at both the VDI (VMWare Horizons with View and Citrix Zenapp) and app virtualization tiers (VMWare ThinApp and Citrix XenApp).
There needs to be a software or hardware component to have local mode to work. All of the solutions in place by Sphere 3D's competitors that I know of use a software-based solution.
A:
I don't think it would be likely to integrate into something like the Intel XMM 7260 chipset. This is because the local hardware should already be capable of connecting back to the cloud using the device's connection to the network (whether it is LTE, wifi, or a wired connection). Offline time usually is a symptom of connection quality to the provider's network coverage. The 7260 chipset is also specific to LTE network connectivity (which would require the end user having a data plan with their device).
If we do see an integration of some sort with the Intel XMM 7260, I would suspect the motive behind it probably has more to do with introducing efficiencies in a mobile or tablet form factor device (ie. power consumption/resource usage).
B:
I suspect an integrated chipset to be used within the device is more likely than a dongle or peripheral device with the chipset in it. Though again, I'm just speculating .... there are too many unknowns to make a concrete guess.
