Intel Launches 'Galileo,' an Arduino-Compatible Mini Computer

MojoKid writes "Although Intel is Chipzilla, the company can't help but extend its reach just a bit into the exciting and growing world of DIY makers and hobbyists. Intel announced its Galileo development board, a microcontroller that's compatible with Arduino software and uses the new Quark X1000 processor (400MHz, 32-bit, Pentium-class, single- core and thread) that Intel announced at the IDF 2013 keynote. The board makes use of Intel's architecture to make it easy to develop for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but it's also completely open hardware (PDF). Galileo is 10cm x 7cm (although ports protrude a bit beyond that), and there are four screw holes for secure mounting. Ports include 10/100 Ethernet, USB client/host ports, RS-232 UART and 3.5mm jack, mini PCIe slot (with USB 2.0 host support); other features include 8MB Legacy SPI Flash for firmware storage, 512KB embedded SRAM, 256MB DRAM, 11KB EEPROM programmed via the EEPROM library, and support for an additional 32GB of storage using a microSD card."

Comments

Inigo Montoya...

[charlieo88]

Mini Computer? Inigo Montoya says, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

Re:pricing?

[pjrc]

Several articles have appeared claiming "under $60".

For for free if you're one of about 50000 students or apparently about 400 people who attended a talk at Maker Faire last weekend in Rome.

However, if you check out Intel FAQ, there are a number of Arduino compatibility caveats. Probably the main on is the I/O pins are controlled by an I/O expander with approx 2ms latency. That's pretty slow compared to Arduino's slow digitalWrite() function, which run about 4us on 16 MHz AVR, or direct AVR register access, which takes 125ns.

The processor runs Linux and Arduino sketches are compiled to native Linux userspace programs, so it probably will open up a lot of possibilities.