Intel has announced the global release of its Edison IoT chip, which has morphed from its initial SD card form factor and Quark SoC guise into a slightly larger Atom and smaller Quark on the same Tangiers SoC. The evolution was made to add more I/O pins than the SD card would allow, according to Intel, in a package the size of a large postage stamp (35.5x25x3.9mm). Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said “the target is for a $50 retail cost. Like the Galileo development board, it’s going to open so developers can build upon this.”
This move into the IoT and wearables markets is largely seen as a response to the criticism that Intel missed the boat on mobile and consequently lost a significant potential market share. The new chips and developer programs are an attack on ARM’s dominance in the low-power arena, but Intel will also have to contend with the growing shipments of MIPS processors from Imagination Technologies – which trumps both x86 and ARM in terms of power consumption.
The 22nm dual-core Atom CPU is clocked at 500MHz, and is supported by 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 4GB of flash memory. The 32-bit Quark CPU will effectively act as a microcontroller for the main chip, clocked at 100MHz. With 40 I/O ports and dual band WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, courtesy of a Broadcom 43340 802.11 a/b/g/n module, this chip is intended to sit at the heart of developer projects across the world. Intel hopes one of these makes it big and takes off – filling Intel’s order books with new volumes of chip shipments.
The software running on the smaller Quark is a new ViperOS real-time operating system (RTOS), developed from Wind River’s (another Intel subsidiary) VxWorks RTOS. The Atom CPU will run a Linux stack based on Yocto Linux 1.6 – and may attract the attention of the sizeable Yocto Project developer community, bringing more into the Edison ecosystem. Intel has also announced a developer program for analytics wearables called A-Wear, aimed at deploying wearables and the associated intelligence inside the Cloudera (an Intel partner) data-management cloud platform.
Intel says the module will initially support development in the Arduino and C/C++ languages, with support for Node.js, Python, other RTOSs and Visual Programming due in the near future. The Edison is compatible with Intel’s Galileo board, so it should find a home among Arduino developers too. However, its biggest limitation on first glance appears to be its poor operating temperature range, of just 0°-40°C.
But we still aren’t convinced that Edison is a strong contender in the IoT sphere. Back in January when the Edison first emerged, we thought that it was simply too powerful and power-hungry for most IoT implementations – and that is an opinion that hasn’t changed in the 9 months since the launch.
For wearables, this is a solid product – one that can power both premium and budget smart watches and glasses, which users will be happy to charge multiple times per week. However, “the power of a Pentium PC in an SD card,” as the pitch went in January, is simply overkill for the vast majority of IoT products. All that processing ability requires electricity to power it, and if the way around this fact is to run the chip at very low processing levels you have to ask whether any sane developer is going to pay the extra price for processing cycles they don’t need.
So while Edison might not ship in large volumes in typical IoT applications, restricting itself to wearables, Intel’s ultra-low power consumption Quark processors certainly have the technical capability to be embedded in all manner of Things – with its distinct categories of Atom mobile processors and Quark IoT chips.
Intel does seem focused on smartwatches for the time being, especially so given the industry buzz surrounding the Apple Watch launch. It has acquired smartwatch and fitness tracker startup Basis Science for a rumored price of between $100-150 million, but has also released its own MICA luxury connected bracelet – which can convey push notifications from a phone to the user.
MICA stands for My Intelligent Communication Accessory and is the result of a partnership with US high end department store Barneys New York, and the Opening Ceremony retail outlets. Its official launch was at the New York Fashion Week – a fitting venue considering its water-snakeskin and gemstone design aesthetic and $1000 price tag.
The MICA devices are clearly meant to draw attention to new categories of technology, rather than stand as viable consumer devices. But with the Apple Watch Edition’s gold construction and the new MICA devices, it appears that the giants of the industry are targeting the buyers of luxury wearables with their new products – and in turn are hoping to convince consumers that these new technologies are desirable and not gimmicky. Will 2015 be the year of the wearable?