You may have seen this. It is Intel efforts to get into embedded market in a big way.
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Intel Underscores Focus On Maker Market, Furthers X86 With Galileo
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It’s obvious that, as of recent times anyway, Intel INTC -1.27% has had their work cut out for themselves with adjacent and new market opportunities beyond their core strengths of desktop and enterprise computing. Though chipzilla may dominate X86 desktop, workstation and server solutions, mobile platforms, powered by licensed ARM core integrations, dominate handsets and tablets. While Intel hurries to play catch-up in the ultra-mobile space (and they appear to finally be executing), low cost single-board computing is apparently an area the company has set its sights on for growth as well.
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Maybe it was the wild success of the ARM-powered Raspberry Pi that keyed Intel on it. It’s quite amazing how big the Raspberry Pi foundation has grown over the years and the number of creative things people are doing with the device, from tiny media servers, to 3D Printer control engines. That said, it’s not so much the products that Intel seems to be after but the “maker” revolution that’s taking off like wildfire. It used to be that the DIY set built their own PCs with Intel processors and off the shelf components and of course that market is still alive and well. These days however, people are also creating, engineering and making all kinds of systems with embedded computers and Intel is smartly jumping into the fray.
Earlier this summer, Intel offered up the Minnow Board, a tiny Intel dual-core Atom mini PC that competes with the likes of the Raspberry Pi, though significantly pricier at $199. The Minnow has a lot of on board features beyond the Raspberry Pi, however, with HDMI, microSD, 2 USB hosts, PCI Express EXPR -3.36%, 3Gbps SATA and an Ethernet port. Regardless, Intel knew they had to get to a lower price point.
Intel’s next move in low cost single board computing is Galileo, a tiny, roughly 4-inch by 3-inch computer based on Intel’s fully synthesizable Quark X1000 system on a chip and it’s much more cost competitive.
Intel Galileo Single Board Computer Based On Quark X1000 SoC
Galileo is a development board based on the Quark X1000 SoC and sports a 32-bit Intel Pentium ISA-based CPU core that is 1/5th the size of the Minnow Board’s Atom core and draws much less power. It’s clocked at 400MHz and also offers USB, Ethernet and PCI Express Gen 2 connectivity. It’s also Arduino software compatible, which should give Intel access to a very large and stable base of users, engineers and creators already working with the controller code.
Intel Galileo Board Block Diagram
Intel Galileo Board Block Diagram
Pricing is being targeted south of $60 and Intel is planning on giving away up to 50,000 of the boards to as many as 1,000 universities worldwide by the end of 2014. Head here to apply. It’s the right move for Intel at the right time. Since Quark X1000 is a fully synthesizable core, Intel is taking a page from ARM’s playbook, offering for the first time a licensed technology sales model for integration with third party IP. Intel will fab Quark-based integrations as well, which should bolster fab utilization on Intel’s 32nm node and future fab processes as the technology migrates.
Getting Quark X1000 with Galileo into the hands of colleges and universities for free will help seed innovation and early adoption of Intel’s latest, now fully synthesizable X86 low power core. It will be interesting to see what the markers create with Galileo and if in some way in the future, it helps springboard low power X86 into new, more disruptive technologies and solutions.
