Intel Releases SD-Card-Sized PC, Unveils Next 14nm Chip

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel Releases SD-Card-Sized PC, Unveils Next 14nm Chip

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 9, 2014 @08:02AM from the go-small-or-go-home dept.

szczys writes: Intel is upping their bid for a place at the efficient-yet-powerful device table. They've launched their Edison board, which features an x86 based SoC running at 100 MHz. The footprint measures 35.5mm x 25.0mm and offers a 70-pin connector to break out 40 pins for add-on hardware. Also at the Intel Developer Forum today, the company demonstrated a PC running on Skylake, a new CPU microarchitecture based on the 14nm process used for Broadwell. Intel is pushing to break into both wearable devices and household devices, as it sees both as huge opportunities for growth.

47 comments

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Dangerous Technology by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 08:05 · Score: 5, Funny

It's a choking hazard
1. Re:Dangerous Technology by Bengie · 2014-09-09 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  Needs more salsa.
Pricing? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 08:06 · Score: 0

What are we looking at for pricing here? If this is cheap enough, it could be lots of fun to find uses for.
1. Re:Pricing? by ArcadeMan · 2014-09-09 08:08 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The price I saw, without shields, is 49$USD. The thing I can't find is if this thing has any video and audio output capabilities.
  Would this be better than a RaspberryPI for small-scale arcade cabinets?
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
2. Re:Pricing? by ArcadeMan · 2014-09-09 08:09 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Also, the summary says "They've launched their Edison board, which features an x86 based SoC running at 100 MHz." but from what I've read, the CPU is a dual-core Atom running at 500MHz, it's the uC which runs at 100MHz.
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
3. Re:Pricing? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-09-09 08:22 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Intel has the Product Brief up. Unless they specifically decided to hide the fact (which would seem unlikely), video appears to be absent.
  
  Wireless connectivity looks pretty nice (wifi and bluetooth out of the box, though BTLE is mysteriously 'in Q4-14', which makes one wonder if perhaps the driver situation has a few grim little stories that we should know about...) and the inclusion of both 2x Atom cores at 500MHz and 1x Quark core at 100MHz is potentially interesting, depending on how easily and elegantly the Atom and Quark 'sides' of the device can talk to one another and either share control of, or at least transfer control of, the various I/O lines.
  
  Not going to shove the rPi out of the way for video-pushing applications, and I suspect that PWM and bitbang-heavy applications may still be underimpressed by Intel compared to the classic microcontroller options; but it could certainly be a contender for a lot of the 'arduino-connected-to-the-network' applications which don't lean too hard on squeezing every last drop out of bare-metal-MCU work; but which could really use a bit more punch on the networking and storage/logging side.
4. Re:Pricing? by petes_PoV · 2014-09-09 08:43 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Would this be better than a RaspberryPI for small-scale arcade cabinets?
  There are already dozens of boards available that are better than the RPi for this sort of use. Many at less than the $49 this thing is up for grabs at.
  
  --
  politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
5. Re:Pricing? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 08:52 · Score: 0
  
  Also, the summary says "They've launched their Edison board, which features an x86 based SoC running at 100 MHz." but from what I've read, the CPU is a dual-core Atom running at 500MHz, it's the uC which runs at 100MHz.
  It is both and atom processor and an x86 processor. FTFA:
  
  The Intel Edison module uses a 22-nm Intel® Atom SoC, formerly Silvermont that includes a dual core, dual threaded CPU at 500 MHz and a 32-bit Intel® Quark processor MCU at 100 MHz.
6. Re:Pricing? by ArcadeMan · 2014-09-09 08:58 · Score: 1
  
  Better as far as the hardware and specifications goes yes, but what about support? Which one is the most popular with the game emulation communities?
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
7. Re:Pricing? by ArcadeMan · 2014-09-09 08:59 · Score: 1
  
  AFAIK, Intel Atom is and always was an x86 CPU.
  I think you meant "it's both an Atom CPU and an MCU".
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
8. Re:Pricing? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-09-09 09:01 · Score: 2
  
  I'm definitely open to suggestions if you have any cool ones to point me to; but I've had some fairly unpleasant experiences with a lot of the theoretically-capable-and-crazy-cheap 'android stick' type sticks and boards. The rPi is indeed quite feeble; but what I/O it has is actually mostly broken out, and (while not exactly FSF-level 'open') is crazy open by the standards of something broadcom based, and enjoys a very strong community of people who can answer questions about any obscure points.
  
  The beaglebone black is a bit more expensive and supply-challenged; but has nicer networking, a bit more punch, ans the SPUs.
  
  Do you know of some things that exploit the various unbelievably cheap smartphone parts; but don't require a working knowledge of chinese datasheets, or have absolutely all signals but HDMI exposed in lilliputan test points? I imagine that there are some; but the couple of times I've dived in without too much research I've ended up with something that...mostly...runs the included Android-build-of-mystery; but is otherwise effectively unusable.
  
  (There are, of course, some nice options over in router-land, in terms of price and network connectivity, sometimes enough GPIO for light work; but those aren't going to be doing much video anytime soon.)
9. Re:Pricing? by Eric+Smith · 2014-09-09 09:10 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  $49 only gets you the Edison module, which is useless by itself. You also need a base board of some kind. The Edison module with the Arduino-compatible base board shown in the photos will set you back $99. Still a pretty good price. 3x more expensive than a Raspberry Pi, but it is a lot more capable.
  I'd get more excited about a 64-bit ARM embedded board, but those aren't available yet, other than a $6000 development board from ARM.
10. Re:Pricing? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-09-09 09:12 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  TFS is simply incorrect; but may have been confused by Intel's "Galileo" board, which is based on Quark (at 400MHz). Curiously, 'Galileo' is much more Arduino-esque (a bit more raw punch, weaker hard-real-time bitbang); but also has a full PCIe lane(brought out on a miniPCIe connector) and 100Mb ethernet(optional PoE in Gen2); but no RF.
  
  The much more PC-like, or at least BB Black/rPi-like Edison has a substantially punchier CPU; but no PCIe, wired ethernet, and includes wifi and BT.
  
  I'm not sure if we are misjudging intel through the lens of existing products, or if Intel can't quite decide what niche to hit; but I find this mix a trifle confusing personally...
  
  The teeny little one has the high powered CPU (relatively speaking); but not the high speed expansion bus or wired networking and PoE options. The relatively big one has high speed expansion (but severely limited GPIO, making compatibility with MCU projects that depend on bitbanging rather tepid); but the weak CPU and limited RAM.
  
  I'm interested, and it's always worth keeping an eye on Intel; but I'm a bit confused about what they are aiming at here.
11. Re: Pricing? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 09:23 · Score: 0
  
  no, atom is AMD64
12. Re:Pricing? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-09-09 09:36 · Score: 1
  
  $6,000? AMD's 64-bit-ARM Opteron A1100 reference board is half as much and (while obviously not very 'embedded') is a rather bigger piece of gear...
13. Re:Pricing? by GNious · 2014-09-09 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  This seems designed as a demo-kit, for inclusion in IoT stuff, not for use at home in funny projects.
14. Re: Pricing? by Narishma · 2014-09-09 10:38 · Score: 3
  
  No, some Atoms are x86 only, some are x86_64.
  
  --
  Mada mada dane.
15. Re: Pricing? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 11:31 · Score: 0
  
  Cubitruck possibly ?
16. Re:Pricing? by FrankDrebin · 2014-09-09 12:08 · Score: 1
  
  Doubtful there's a driver problem with BTLE since there should be no new drivers required if the device is BT conformant (since the BT spec defines the HCI and that is well-supported by all major OS'es). More likely it's BTLE firmware for the chip that's under development.
  
  --
  Anybody want a peanut?
17. Re:Pricing? by Eric+Smith · 2014-09-09 16:29 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but good luck actually buying the A1100 reference board today. It's easy to offer a lower price on something you're not actually selling.
18. Re: Pricing? by jones_supa · 2014-09-09 18:10 · Score: 1
  
  True, although only N270 and N280 are x86-32.
19. Re:Pricing? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-10 00:49 · Score: 0
  
  Is the IO broken, or are you merely hitting the bus sharing usb/eth problem?
20. Re:Pricing? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-09-11 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, my phrasing was ambiguous: the rPi I/O is 'broken out' in the sense of 'breakout board', it's substantially accessible on reasonably friendly headers that you can connect to without tiny elven soldering fingers or oddball connectors; unlike the (otherwise cheap and quite tempting) 'buy an android mini-stick-thing/used phone with 3rd party firmware support' option, which gets you power, sometimes a screen, and a few peripherals for crazy cheap; but where you'll be lucky to find a handful of undocumented test points, much less any headers.
  
  The chip the rPi is based on really isn't quite right for the job(but feel the price...) so eth isn't so hot; but I've never had any serious issues, assuming an acceptance of the speed limits.
21. Re:Pricing? by Agripa · 2014-09-11 11:24 · Score: 1
  
  That was one of the first things I checked. I has neither video nor audio interfaces and apparently no peripheral interface except for USB and it is not clear how that is hooked up. In theory Ethernet could be added via USB but that is already my reason for not using the Pi.
  It is not a replacement for the Pi or Beagle Bone.
Arduino Compatible by necro81 · 2014-09-09 08:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

The Dev Board that Edison plugs into appears to have Arduino R3 headers on there, presumably for plugging in Arduino-compatible shields. That's interesting, and makes a fair bit of sense: there are thousands of Arduino-compatible shields out there, and adding some serious computational power in there plus wire(d)(less) networking opens up a lot of possibilities.
1. Re:Arduino Compatible by QuasiSteve · 2014-09-09 08:44 · Score: 1
  
  Correct - though that's only one option. You can also plug it into other boards (termed 'bricks', so Arduino has Shields, BeagleBone as Capes, and Edison has Bricks). SparkFun - next to Adafruit probably the best-known company for this sort of thing - has got a bunch of bricks plus the Edison available for pre-order starting today:
  https://www.sparkfun.com/news/...
  https://www.sparkfun.com/categ...
  Among those is the standard Arduino form factor breakout out of Intel itself, but also a brick for an Arduino Pro Mini form factor, and a bunch of more generic bricks like accelerometer/gyro, GPIO, (tiny) display.
  I do wonder why there doesn't appear to be a sound brick.. seems like an oversight especially when they've got everything else required to make a tiny little portable gaming unit.
2. Re:Arduino Compatible by Areyoukiddingme · 2014-09-09 11:17 · Score: 1
  
  You can also plug it into other boards (termed 'bricks',
  You included links to SparkFun but still called them bricks? They're called blocks, not bricks.
  There was a time when SGI held a trademark on calling computer expansion parts 'bricks'. Not sure if that trademark has lapsed or not. If Intel was calling them bricks and is now calling them blocks, one can surmise the trademark is still extant and it took a while for the lawyers to notice.
3. Re:Arduino Compatible by QuasiSteve · 2014-09-09 11:42 · Score: 1
  
  Haha - you're absolutely right! Not sure why I had 'bricks' on the mind :(
4. Re:Arduino Compatible by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 12:26 · Score: 0
  
  who gives a fuck
These things used to be big as houses by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 08:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

Boy have we come a long way.
1. Re:These things used to be big as houses by LoRdTAW · 2014-09-09 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  It's smaller than the 40 pin DIP package of the original 8086. As someone who first used an Apple II clone (Franklin Ace 1200) and then an 8086, I can still appreciate how far we have come.
500 MHz, dual core... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 08:22 · Score: 0

The Intel Edison module uses a 22-nm Intel® Atom SoC, formerly Silvermont that includes a dual core, dual threaded CPU at 500 MHz and a 32-bit Intel® Quark processor MCU at 100 MHz.
Distractions by suso · 2014-09-09 08:24 · Score: 0

Wow look at that cool new small device released by Ap.... Oh wait, nevermind.
An army! by blueshift_1 · 2014-09-09 08:36 · Score: 1

It's amazing how cheap and effecient microcontrollers have become... who needs a beefy computer when you can have an army of controllers for less!
1. Re:An army! by TeknoHog · 2014-09-09 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  It's amazing how cheap and effecient microcontrollers have become... who needs a beefy computer when you can have a Beowulf cluster of controllers for less!
  FTFY.
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The ARM world is failing by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 08:44 · Score: 0, Offtopic

If there won't soon be an architectural agreement that allows OS distributions to be installed on arbitrary ARM devices, boot loader and all, then Intel will crush the ARM world and relegate it to a short blip in computing history. Every single model of phone, tablet, media player and whatever else runs Android needs a software development team to adapt the OS to the device. That's an untenable situation and will lead to ARM's downfall.
x86? by TeknoHog · 2014-09-09 08:50 · Score: 1

As this wasn't clear from skimming the articles, should I assume this is the old 32-bit x86 or x86-64? Because the latter has been around for 11 years, which is a geological time in computing, and we should really move on. Of course for something really embedded you'd want an ARM or a microcontroller, so there would be little point in keeping the x86 32-bit.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
1. Re:x86? by Eric+Smith · 2014-09-09 09:13 · Score: 1
  
  The 100 MHz Quark MCU is 32-bit. The dual-core Atom CPU is very likely 64-bit. There were some early Atom chips that had 64-bit disabled, but none of the recent ones have.
2. Re:x86? by karnal · 2014-09-09 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  I just watched the sparkfun video of their release of the device; it's 32 bit.
  
  --
  Karnal
3. Re:x86? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-09-09 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  It isn't 100% clear: All 'Silvermont' SKUs appear to be 64 bit capable, and this board has a Silvermont-based Atom on it(two of them actually); but Intel's Edison Native Applications Guide definitely appears to be walking you through setting up a build environment for 32 bit x86.
  
  Whether that means that Intel actually lasered support for 64 bit execution off when they were designing this chip(which isn't like most of the other Silvermont devices, which have a GPU and more PC-style I/O, so clearly some cutting was done), or whether it means that they decided to default to 32 bits for everything because the device only has 1GB of RAM soldered on and no support for more, is not clear from anything I've been able to find.
4. Re:x86? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 09:52 · Score: 0
  
  Install Windows 98 on Edison!!!
Obl. Beowulf Cluster by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 09:03 · Score: 0

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
It could calculate the end of Pi!
Skylake is a big deal. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 09:04 · Score: 0

It will bring wireless everything and DDR4 and making the package smaller[than Skylake] gets a bit harder to get right every time...so yields could go down and prices up.
It might be the 1999 of CPUs.
It is also what I'm waiting for to do a major rebuild of my home_monster_server.
wrong speed, szczys by X0563511 · 2014-09-09 09:24 · Score: 1

The microcontroller runs at that speed. The x86 CPU is 500mhz dual-core.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
does it have a camera interface (DVP or MIPI)? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-09 09:32 · Score: 0

I looked at the specs and don't see a DVP or MIPI camera interface. This would've been otherwise perfect for my computer vision application! Why would it not have one?
14nm? Where I come from, that's tiny. by Wootery · 2014-09-09 11:26 · Score: 1

I never cease to be amazed by the progress made in shrinking transistors. I wonder how long the trend will continue.
DATASHEET / WEBSITE LACKS POWER SPEC !!! OMGBBQ1 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-10 06:05 · Score: 0

Nowhere does it say how much power this thingy consumes. This is *sorta* important.