Intel aims at the Arduino: Galileo

[Rick Law]

Whether you are in Germany or USA, one toilet bowl is like another.

Not quite, not quite. The first kind is optimized for stool watching and the second is handy for interrogations using near drowning.

On a side note, the one most significant difference I saw, in this case, with urinals...  In Brussels intl airport, the urinals has a "target" painted/baked into the ceramic - a blue-ish color fly.  At first, I thought it was real.  Then I realized it was a figure baked on to the ceramic.  Thinking about it, I think it was there at a specific spot to reduce splash.  Like reflect action, I was aiming at it...
(For the picky readers, it could have been Amsterdam, or both.  I spend enough time in either of them that sometimes I don't even remember which one I was in.)

So, the "user interface" would be a little superficially different, but the guts of the PC would be the same.

[Bored@Work]

the urinals has a "target" painted/baked into the ceramic - a blue-ish color fly.  At first, I thought it was real.  Then I realized it was a figure baked on to the ceramic.  Thinking about it, I think it was there at a specific spot to reduce splash.  Like reflect action, I was aiming at it...

It is indeed for target exercises. It is supposed to reduce the accidental misses by motivating users to target better, and this should then reduce cleaning costs.

[firehopper]

same thing at the urinals at work. blue fly like thing

[westfw]

The GPIO output pins on Intel® Galileo are provided by an I2C Port Expander

Wow.  I was looking at photos of the board, and thinking "Quark isn't much of an SoC (in the microcontroller sense of the word); it looks like there are external chips for the ethernet, and maybe the USB, and the RAM, and..."  But I did not expect GPIO to be "distant."

This is one of the reasons people over in the 8bit vs 32bit thread are so hesitant to accept 32bit chips; No, I don't want to set up a DMA'ed PCI Express bus transaction to the USB-hosted I2C controller port expander so that I can flip a digital bit.  I just want to flip the damned bit.  Yes, it helps that you've provided libraries so that I can just do digitalWrite(p,b), but since it turns out to be 40x slower and much bigger, what was the advantage of the 32bit 400MHz CPU again?

I think I know "why", though.  It's that "Internet of Things" stuff.  You just can't fit even Trivial IoT applications onto 8bit cpus, because even Trivial apps "require" non-trivial protocols, parsing, encryption, and security.  By the time you add "hw support" to do that stuff on an 8-bit CPU, you might as well have started with a 32bit CPU (cost wise, ease-of-implementation-wise, size-wise, etc.)  (Look at the ridiculous prices of an Arduino with WiFi, for instance.)  Similar things happen when you start thinking "GUI."

[ovnr]

I'd be really happy to have a cheap x86-based dev board, but this is not it.

Because the more alternatives to ARM cores there is, the better - I'm getting sick and tired of seeing them every-fucking-where, and I am doing my part to avoid 'em.

Yay MIPS cores.

[Harvs]

I'd be really happy to have a cheap x86-based dev board, but this is not it.

Because the more alternatives to ARM cores there is, the better - I'm getting sick and tired of seeing them every-fucking-where, and I am doing my part to avoid 'em.

Is it the processor or the peripheral implementation that turns you off? Just curious...

Yay MIPS cores.

Is there any MIPS devices that have dev boards to compete in this space? (i.e. against ARM A processors.)   Are there even any MIPS processors in this space at all?

[tszaboo]

http://www.imgtec.com/mips/developers/development-platforms.asp
There you go, the MIPS lineup. I did my time with PIC32, i must say, they are not all that bad. If you are prepared with the usual Michrochip silliness.

[Stonent]

How about a 40 Pin PDIP 8086 (software) compatible processor with 1MB of RAM and a couple of megs of flash all in one chip. 
Have an option in the software to turn a block of pins into a VGA output or serial port.  So basically an all in one 1980's PC on a breadboardable chip.

[AndyC_772]

Because the more alternatives to ARM cores there is, the better - I'm getting sick and tired of seeing them every-fucking-where, and I am doing my part to avoid 'em.

I'm not sure I see the logic here. The important thing about a microcontroller project is what the microcontroller is doing, not what it actually is. If an ARM processor ticks all the boxes for cost, performance, feature set and so on, then why not get on and use it? Learn CMSIS and the standard peripheral libraries once, then get on with the interesting, important bit of the job.

I still get jobs coming in which specify the need for a PIC (generally because the customer in question is already using them, has the tools for them and so on), but otherwise I'm very much aiming down the ARM Cortex route for new designs.

When I worked out that I can get an STM32 with the same peripheral set as a PIC18 but several times the memory and many times the performance, for much less cost than the PIC, then it was pretty much game over.

[westfw]

How about a 40 Pin PDIP 8086 (software) compatible processor with 1MB of RAM and a couple of megs of flash all in one chip.

8086 only has 1MB address space (or did you mean x86 in a more generic sense?)

I'd be sort-of happy with an "original IBM PC" on a chip: 256kB flash, 256kB RAM, plus the usual microcontroller set: uart, gpio, SPI, I2C...   Maybe, anyway.  In some sense it'd be like my original favorite PDP10 mainframe architecture.  Sure, it was classic and had its strong points.  But I don't really want to go back to anything with pointers smaller than 32bits, if it's supposed to displace 8bit micros.  (Where 8bit micros really get painful is with the kludges that have been bolted on to make them use more than (usually) 64k of memory.  Bank switching sucks.)

[Stonent]

How about a 40 Pin PDIP 8086 (software) compatible processor with 1MB of RAM and a couple of megs of flash all in one chip.

8086 only has 1MB address space (or did you mean x86 in a more generic sense?)

I'd be sort-of happy with an "original IBM PC" on a chip: 256kB flash, 256kB RAM, plus the usual microcontroller set: uart, gpio, SPI, I2C...   Maybe, anyway.  In some sense it'd be like my original favorite PDP10 mainframe architecture.  Sure, it was classic and had its strong points.  But I don't really want to go back to anything with pointers smaller than 32bits, if it's supposed to displace 8bit micros.  (Where 8bit micros really get painful is with the kludges that have been bolted on to make them use more than (usually) 64k of memory.  Bank switching sucks.)

Yeah that's why I said 1MB, or actually no, the 8086 I think could do 16MB but the 8088 could only do 1MB I think.  The 8088 was a cut down version of the 8086 with only an 8 bit bus.

[ovnr]

Is it the processor or the peripheral implementation that turns you off? Just curious...

Well, the processor core itself. But I've also heard some less than flattering things about the peripherals (LPC & STM32).
Sure, all micros have their "endearing features" (bugs disguised as features), but there is often far too much dicking around to get even simple peripherals to work.
Yup, there are libraries, but in my experience the documentation has been less than stellar, often in a
"why don't you just go read the source and datasheet and try to figure it out, we can't be bothered documenting it" fashion.

I'm not sure I see the logic here. The important thing about a microcontroller project is what the microcontroller is doing, not what it actually is. If an ARM processor ticks all the boxes for cost, performance, feature set and so on, then why not get on and use it? Learn CMSIS and the standard peripheral libraries once, then get on with the interesting, important bit of the job.

Yes, but this is a political decision, because for my usage, the performance/cost difference is miniscule - and fairly irrelevant.
I'm just sad to see ARM dominate the market the way things stand, and if I can do my part to use different architectures, I'm happy to.

Also, the MIPS instruction set makes me happy because it makes sense. Haven't gotten that deep into the ARM side of things due to the above reasons, and I don't plan to.
And for the people who go "oh but noone cares about assembly anymore" - I've learnt heaps of things from reading the machine code generated by the compiler.

[amyk]

Yeah that's why I said 1MB, or actually no, the 8086 I think could do 16MB but the 8088 could only do 1MB I think.  The 8088 was a cut down version of the 8086 with only an 8 bit bus.

8086 and 8088 both have 20-bit address bus (1MB space); you're probably thinking of the 80286 with its 24-bit address bus.

To me, the advantage of x86 comes along with the PC architecture (standard peripherals like the 8042, PIT, DMA/PIC, CMOS/RTC, ISA, PCI, ...) so it doesn't make as much sense to pull out the core and leave everything else out; much of the legacy code that makes x86 so successful is also code that uses those other standard PC-amenities. ARM cores are incorporated into tons of widely incompatible system architectures, x86 customarily is part of the PC. Galileo isn't really a PC, it can't run Windows or DOS, so I don't see as much point to it.

The GPIO, as pointed out above, also sounds horrible; a full-size PC chipset usually has a few dozen of them, and since they're in the southbridge, they can be toggled at rates in the MHz range...

[usLEDsupply]

i like the idea of being able to use a Wi-Fi module and all the memory and the fact they are providing tons to schools but don't like the slow speed I/O ultimately it will all come down to the price, if it can isn't much more than the Netduino i may order up a few but it sounds like we have to wait a few more weeks until they are released the Arduino Tre also looks sweet but it sounds expensive as well?

[cubansite]

Lets not forget how we can pull the AVR off the Arduino and embed it in our final projects.

Then go on ebay and pick up another AVR for dirty cheap 

[peter.mitchell]

Lets not forget how we can pull the PIC off the Arduino and embed it in our final projects.

Then go on ebay and pick up another PIC for dirty cheap 

I'm not sure what you're implying with that?

[senso]

Arduino uses AVR's, not crusty pics.

[poorchava]

Intel's like 3 years or something to late with this. Less capabilities than a simple beaglebone or RPi for more money. Fail!

[Rerouter]

I'm not sure what you're implying with that?

What diameter wire is that  and if that was hand soldered, what is the bga pitch?

[ataradov]

Looks like a 0.8 mm ball pitch and enameled wire. It is not that hard to hand solder, just time consuming and requires a decent soldering iron.

[konatsu]

[/quote]

I'm not sure what you're implying with that?

[/quote]

Nice Skill

[mrflibble]

Nice Skill

Indeed. An interesting combination of skill, determination and no small measure of masochism. Personally I draw the line at dead bugging QFN's. What is that, 107 balls? Impressive.

[marshallh]

Pretty impressive, but whoever did it didn't check to see what kind of device they were lifting, or whether all 100+ pins needed to be extended. Wires on the outrigger pins? If that is a NAND flash memory then it is only going to have a narrow data bus and some control signals. No need for many of those wires. It wouldn't look as neat though.

[ZeroStatic]

Seems like massive overkill for basic projects.
May be really interesting for development of higher end projects with the massive amount of x86 legacy code that can run on this thing.
I wonder how much power it uses, could be a good home automation controller if the power used is low.
Probably the Raspberry PI will kick it's ass in almost every category especially price.

Just my opinion.

[peter.mitchell]

Pretty impressive, but whoever did it didn't check to see what kind of device they were lifting, or whether all 100+ pins needed to be extended. Wires on the outrigger pins? If that is a NAND flash memory then it is only going to have a narrow data bus and some control signals. No need for many of those wires. It wouldn't look as neat though.

seems like some kind of dram