Intel Edison

[reason]

Hi everyone, just saw the Intel try to enter the hobby microcontrollers  market with this product https://communities.intel.com/community/makers/edison/getting-started/overview, its pricey but comes packed with integrated wi-fi and bluetooth.
It will be interesting to see a review of this product from Dave 

[miguelvp]

More info here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/intel-edison/

But to me, it seems they (Intel) don't have their stuff together just yet.

[reason]

didnt know the topic already exists, its already selling, breakout boards and the MCU board, this thing comes with a lot of memory , the price is kinda ok considering the extras that comes with. the neat things it has an arduino compatible breakout board

[miguelvp]

The problem is the GPIO speed not the headers, the Galileo is even worse at 230Hz on most GPIOs

My Cypress pioneer dev kit at $25 has Arduino headers and can use them way better than the Edison or Galileo

Although I don't have an Edison and it seems more competent than the Galileo.

[dannyf]

What is it designed for?

Sounds interesting but I stopped reading at the Arduino IDE part. With a real IDE, it may be worth exploring.

[Rasz]

What is it designed for?

to mark a KPI checkbox on some Intel managers spreadsheet

[westfw]

What is it designed for?

"Internet of Things", of course.  At least it has a credible amount of hardware and a real internet-capable connection, unlike many of the "It's small and has a communication interface!  Ideal for IoT!!" marketing of some vendors.  I've never quite understood all the people spending $30 for an Arduino (with 32k of program memory) and another $70 or so for a WiFi Shield of some kind.

[reason]

What is it designed for?

Sounds interesting but I stopped reading at the Arduino IDE part. With a real IDE, it may be worth exploring.

Arduino IDE is more than enough for most hobby work , if you need more professional stuff there are other solutions, but i think its only device in this size that comes with 1gb ram , 4gb for storage, wi-fi and bluetooth, on it you can run everything like home brew linux, android, custom firmware, whatever. I'm glad that the times for spending $70 or more just for a wi-fi shield are about to end. for many it could be the main choice because of this.

[Kjelt]

its pricey 

What is it designed for?

"Internet of Things", of course.

Two very opposite quotes there.
It looks like Intel wants a piece of the raspberry pie. If they don't market it below the pies price they don't get it and won't get it.

[PointyOintment]

What is it designed for?

Sounds interesting but I stopped reading at the Arduino IDE part. With a real IDE, it may be worth exploring.

It runs full Linux; you can write whatever Linux app you want.

What is it designed for?

"Internet of Things", of course.

Two very opposite quotes there.
It looks like Intel wants a piece of the raspberry pie. If they don't market it below the pies price they don't get it and won't get it.

SparkFun's rebuttal

[Marco]

The problem is the GPIO speed not the headers, the Galileo is even worse at 230Hz on most GPIOs

Galileo v2 has 12 native GPIOs right? Are they still slow?

[miguelvp]

The problem is the GPIO speed not the headers, the Galileo is even worse at 230Hz on most GPIOs

Galileo v2 has 12 native GPIOs right? Are they still slow?

Not sure, I only have a Rev 1 board
But I bet they are faster than the cypress i2c solution they used in the Rev 1 board.

If truly native and the board runs at 400MHz (and I found mine running a bit over 405MHz) then it should be able to do up to 200MHz on the pins if they are all on the same address.

Here is a link that includes the code I used to read the time stamp counter:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/intel-quark-soc-running-windows-iot-on-intel-galileo-(rev-1)/

Of course Microsoft doesn't yet support the Gen 2 boards so I'm not going to get one because I really don't want to use the arduino IDE.

The Edison IO is restricted by the Quark processor running at 100MHz so the Edison module can drive the I/O at 50MHz tops.

No news yet if the Edison will be supported by Microsoft IoT windows.

[johnnyfp]

The Edison IO is restricted by the Quark processor running at 100MHz

What makes you say that? I can't see anywhere that says the Edison is restricted by the Quark MCU for IO. As far as I can tell the Quark MCU is yet not in use or available for use until Intel provide some drivers for it for the Yocto Embedded linux to use.

Plug time. I've made up one of these Edison Simple Breakout board so have direct connection to the IO and can test and see how fast I can get the IO to actually output, but in all honesty do you really need more that 50Mhz switching speed on a GPIO?
Would not the SPI or SDIO be better suited to doing anything at a higher speed?

[miguelvp]

I still can't find a diagram of the actual Edison and how things are connected.
So the Quark is disabled right now?

Found some more info here, earlier I did hear that the Quark handled the I/O, but since there is no diagram I can't tell either way.

http://linuxgizmos.com/edison-iot-module-ships-with-atom-plus-quark-combo-soc/

we have a single module with a single Tangier SoC that combines a modified, dual-core Merrifield Atom running Yocto Linux with a single-core Quark that is initially disabled. On the Galileo, the Quark runs the show, but on the Edison, it appears to be relegated to a microcontroller-like role, with an emphasis on lower-level, real-time chores. ViperOS RTOS support for the Edison’s Quark processor is currently under development, says Chase.

[johnnyfp]

Well according to an Intel Employee on thier forum

In fact the Edison has a Quark MCU as part of its SoC but right now the Quark isn't activated. At the end of the year there is going to be a second release of the software for the Edison and, the Quark will be active.

https://communities.intel.com/message/252124#252124

[westfw]

do you really need more that 50Mhz switching speed on a GPIO?

No, but you need a lot more that the 230Hz of the v1 Galileo.  "at least as fast as an Arduino" (~4MHz) would be good.
(You have to do ... terrible things ... to get close to that 4Mhz on an Arduino.  Using digitalWrite() you are looking at less than 200KHz, IIRC.  But the point is that you CAN do such things.  On Gv1, the 230Hz pin-toggle rate was limited by the hardware design...)

[miguelvp]

A datasheet on how the Edison is wired up internally would be nice. I just can't seem to find it.

[johnnyfp]

Yeah good luck.

There are a lot of missing or not yet published documents for the Edison.

[David Hess]

If truly native and the board runs at 400MHz (and I found mine running a bit over 405MHz) then it should be able to do up to 200MHz on the pins if they are all on the same address.

...

The Edison IO is restricted by the Quark processor running at 100MHz so the Edison module can drive the I/O at 50MHz tops.

Higher speed microcontrollers usually have decoupled I/O or even a decoupled I/O bus placing limitation on the toggle rate.  The earlier ARM microcontrollers did not even have interlocks so if you tried to toggle an I/O pin too quickly, the I/O became erratic.

... but in all honesty do you really need more that 50Mhz switching speed on a GPIO?
Would not the SPI or SDIO be better suited to doing anything at a higher speed?

You probably do not need 50 MHz or faster bit-bang I/O but 230 Hz is too slow and the dedicated interfaces may have better things to do.

The thing I really find annoying is if I wanted to upgrade from an 8 or 16 bit microcontroller to one of the current Intel solutions, I would still need another microcontroller (or FPGA) with a different ISA to handle low latency I/O.  If I upgrade to ARM and still need a second microcontroller, at least it could use the same instruction set and likely even the same development environment.

[miguelvp]

That's the Galileo Gen 1 that is limited by the I2C bus for GPIOs.
But in any event I don't think I'll even try to mess with the Edison at the current price offering and lack of documentation.
 

[amyk]

The amusing thing is that most if not all PC chipsets have GPIOs that can work at the base PCI frequency (33MHz); even the Galileo has 16 GPIOs in its SoC that can toggle at full speed, but for some idiotic reason they're not actually available for use.

[Scrts]

The amusing thing is that most if not all PC chipsets have GPIOs that can work at the base PCI frequency (33MHz); even the Galileo has 16 GPIOs in its SoC that can toggle at full speed, but for some idiotic reason they're not actually available for use.

PCI required extremely tight timing. It was damn difficult to achieve that precise timing on the FPGA, so forget having it in simple microprocessors if it doesn't have dedicated PCI peripheral. On the other hand, PCI is dead. PCIe is the way to go.

[miguelvp]

The amusing thing is that most if not all PC chipsets have GPIOs that can work at the base PCI frequency (33MHz); even the Galileo has 16 GPIOs in its SoC that can toggle at full speed, but for some idiotic reason they're not actually available for use.

Galileo Gen 2 gives native control to the GPIOs, too bad I got the earlier one
Also as far as I know Gen 2 is not yet supported by windows on devices, if that is the purpose for it then wait until is supported or stick with sketches.

[TunerSandwich]

I have been playing with my Edison for a bit now (couple weeks).  It's rubbish.  The tools for truly professional application aren't there, and the lack of documentation and object base makes it useless for "hobby types".

It's only documentation is conflicting, in error and useless.

This device was ill conceived, pushed to market too quickly and has no real application, other than novelty. 

Who cares if can run native x86, there is no IDE yet and no documentation, or object base to build from. 

Why should I have to re-invent the wheel just to use this thing?

Also I measured it's draw at 280mA (1 ish watt @ nominal cell voltage) while on the network.  Hardly usable for an embed device, running from a single 18650 Li cell, and that isn't including supporting hardware or GPIO connected hardware. 

USELESS JUNK!!!

ARM cortex A8 has broader saturation, better availability, more dev tools and far better power efficiency. 

Also why no colck REF input of V ref input?  So much for my idea about rubidium GPS sync and precision timing....

Shame on the Intel corporate team that forced the engineers to push out such a steaming pile of shit....  

P.S. why in the blue hell would you build it with an internal 1.8v bus and then a 1v "precision internal V ref" and then no internal A/D.....so much UN-necessary bullshit is going to have to be waded through to properly reference this to an external 10-bit a/d.....or 12-bit or my dream of 24 bits......there goes my precision PSU/PoL/Metrics project dreams....

[SirNick]

I had no idea Windows for Devices existed.  Both that and x86 embedded seem like high-heels on a race horse to me, but OK...  While I'm skeptical to say the least, the hobbyist market is pretty resourceful and creative with new tech.  Curious to see what becomes of this.