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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."
I know there will be haters, but the more corporate interest and entries in this category the better in my opinion. And if it happens to forward the interests of Intel, more power to them.
Mini Computer? Inigo Montoya says, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
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.
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Linux is not inherently bloaty. The kernel and a busybox based user space run on hardware a good deal weaker than this. I love Linux for embedded systems. Its network stack is rock solid, and with the modern kernel it is pretty easy to get near realtime performance.
I've heard ~$60 thrown around as a number, though not an authoritative one. Lousy by the standards of Arduino projects that really are 8-bit MCU work; but the world is infested with Arduino projects that have the MCU twiddling a few sensors and then a (surprisingly expensive) ethernet/wifi shield bodged on to report the results to the internet. If that's you, the cost gets a lot more competitive.
Though, on the downside (similarly not-yet-confirmed) reports are that the arrangement Intel uses to support the GPIO is pretty limited, compared to much cheaper parts that do GPIO closer to the metal, in terms of the speeds at which it can bit-bang the assorted oddball peripherals (those cheapie LED strands for instance) that many arduino projects end up bit-banging to communicate with. Having a real ethernet and SD interface, not SPI hacks, is nice; but if those reports are to be believed, your project had better be doable without extensive bitbang interfacing.
Hey, everybody! An old man is talking!
And try to make an Arduino without buying an Atmel microcontroller.
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Sorry for Intel, but the just announced Arduino Tre is far better from any point of views.
http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/10/03/a-sneak-preview-of-arduino-tre/?utm_source=Arduino+World&utm_campaign=9f14cc4ca3-MakerFaire_World_201310_2_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_69a7d1abe4-9f14cc4ca3-76843037
* Run faster than the Intel solution: An Atom core yield the same code execution speed as an Cortex-A8 core at the same frequency, so 1GHz A8 will easily catch on a 0.4GHz ia32).
* Cheaper and simpler to design on a custom board: just look at the chip package and at the PCB routing...
* Simpler power supply design, again just look at the schematics and at the PCB.
* HDMI output.
* More I/O, and all are integrated directly into the two CPUs, not using peripheral chips with low bandwidth.
* Already supported by larges communities, for the two processors.
Intel is just trying to enter a new market with a big buzz, but there actual solution still far away from the concurrent solutions. There just don't understand that in the embedded market nobody is bounded to the ia32 instructions set. Integration is the key and there Quark X1000 don't bring anything new on the table.
While I like the idea of having an Arduino compatible board running Linux to do some more advanced projects, I don't understand what drove Intel to force this board to be Arduino compatible. The Quark processor is not designed for this sort of stuff as it has neither a sufficient number of GPIO pins nor any ADCs. It sure has a lot of interfaces (SPI, I2C, PCI-E, SD-Card, Serial etc.), but it lacks the things that are useful for a hacker project.
So they had to include a separate GPIO extender chip (over a slow I2C interconnect) as well as an separate ADC. The Quark SoC has some 15 GPIO Pins, the extender another 40. But of those 55 Pins only 20 GPIO pins are actually available on the Arduino shield pins -- the rest is used for all the Muxes to switch pins between the ADC, the GPIO Extender and the Quark SoC to emulate the flexibility of the Arduino AVR processor.
While I haven't looked at the actual PCB schematic, I think the board layout is also strange. The ADC is on the opposite side from the analog input pins, meaning that all analog signals have to travel a long distance in the vicinity of some high speed digital signals. And the GPIO Extender Chip is on the opposite corner from all the digital output pins.
This, together with the BGA devices (SoC, RAM), seem to indicate that this is at least an 6 layer board which will make it hard to clone this design -- something that IMHO has contributed to the success of the Arduino. The Schematic for this board has 27 pages compared to the single page of the Arduino Uno
It seems that this Board is designed more as a competitor to the Raspberry Pi than to the Arduino, both in price and in features.The Arduino compatibility is just some marketing thing which makes the board overly complex and more expensive than it needs to be.
But hey, it sure must be fun to employ a few million transistors and a full blown operating system to run the Arduino Blink demo :-)
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The "someone" mentioning 230 Hz is INTEL, in their Galileo FAQ.
http://www.intel.com/support/galileo/faq.htm
The question is near the end, specifically "What is the maximum rate at which GPIO output pins can be updated?"
The answer, which you'll see if you click that link and expand the question to see the answer, is:
The GPIO output pins on Intel® Galileo are provided by an I2C Port Expander that is running at standard mode (100 kHz). Each I2C request to update a GPIO requires approximately 2ms. In addition to software overhead, this restricts the frequency achievable on the GPIO outputs to approximately 230 Hz.
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