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Intel Releases SD-Card-Sized PC, Unveils Next 14nm Chip
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.
It's a choking hazard
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.
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?
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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.
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Boy have we come a long way.
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.
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.
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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.)
$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.
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.
No, some Atoms are x86 only, some are x86_64.
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