
Intel Edison Module - gao8a
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/edison.html
======
centizen
Very interesting! The picture is kind of confusing though, it took me a minute
to realize that the picture was of an "expansion board" with the module
installed (in the lower left hand corner).

I like what I see though, they have packed quite a bit of processing power
into the tiny package. Good amounts of memory too. And I really like the built
in WiFi/bluetooth. Looks like it could be a good option for making connected
devices with. The only problem is transitioning from prototype to production
with Intels current business model.

This video does a good job to show off the Edison on it's own, for anyone
interested.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GY8k...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GY8kaaFzbTE)

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Its definitely a lot better than the Galileo - Intel was pretty liberal giving
them away for free, yet still nobody used them since they sucked.

Not sure what the strategy is though - are they afraid to loose developer
mindshare to Atmel / TI? Are they hoping that their chips will power the next
kickstarter success?

My 5 cents: at least they are a player now, and the CC3200 has a competitor.

Issues:

\- for battery-powered projects, its a bit large

\- 1.8V logic level is nice for energy consumption, but its really hard to
source components for that, and level shifters are annoying

\- price is a tad bit high, though adequate for its performance

~~~
rasz_pl
You need to realize they are trying to compete in a market soon to be
dominated by $4 a pop (RETAIL) Chinese modules. They will fail (and so will
TI).

[http://hackaday.com/2014/08/26/new-chip-alert-the-
esp8266-wi...](http://hackaday.com/2014/08/26/new-chip-alert-the-esp8266-wifi-
module-its-5/)

Galileo was a total failure. Intel gave up giving whole stock to MS, MS in
turn gave them out to developers pretending they have viable IoT platform.

~~~
digitailor
Thank you for this- I have a handful of completely unmarked boards that appear
to be this module. Who knew they might be so capable? I hope someone
translates the instruction set document linked. This is definitely the
direction that things are going, at least more than an odd $50 Intel mongrel.

Intel wants us to pay for something that industry won't buy with the Edison.
Contrast to Arduino and rPi, which are providing affordable access to
something only available otherwise to industry:

AVR: High volume microcontroller- let's make it accessible and useful outside
of heavy industry == Arduino.

ARM: Exploding in popularity due to mobile devices- let's make it accessible
outside of device manufacturers == rPi.

Atom: No one is using these in industry- let's palm it off on hobbyists and
see if they can drive demand == Edison.

Hard to find the point of the Edison. Too anemic and dull next to true next-
gen SoC solutions like the Zynq
[[http://zedboard.org/](http://zedboard.org/)], and too overpowered for most
microcontroller applications. Weird price point. No GPU or vidout. There's
many SoMs and SoCs to try before this one.

Intel has had to give away Atoms to get them used in any volume, this HN
comment on a contemporaneous article has links on the subject:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8294864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8294864)

If Intel wants to hit the hobbyist embedded market running, they could sell
Edisons for $10. By giving them away to heavy industry, yet selling them to
hobbyists, they aren't garnering interest, they're patronizing.

~~~
niutech
I'd add STM32: Spark Core with built-in WiFi for $39.

------
tdicola
Impressive how much Intel can shrink their X86 processors and supporting
hardware. However I think Intel is making a mistake trying to push Arduino
'compatibility' with this and the Galileo. Unless they actually put an AVR
microcontroller on board it will have poor compatibility with Arduino shields
(like the Galileo). You also won't have real-time control of the GPIO so
making servos move smoothly, talking to 1-wire-like interfaces (like WS2811
LEDs), etc. will be problematic. Lots of folks were excited about the Galileo
but unhappy after actually using it and realizing its limitations. Hopefully
Intel will get the messaging a little better this time.

~~~
pinkyand
I think they've improved in this regard: they've added an independent
microcontroller inside the core(which will probably run the arduino
layer).This will solve compatibility and real time issues.

This is in general targeted to a bunch of chips that integrate a
microprocessor and a microcontroller and are usually fabricated in 65nm-45nm.
With it's process advantage(22nm finfet) , intel can offer orders of magnitude
lower sleep currents, some nice decrease on power(depending on x86 vs arm
details), and more power in general. All interesting to embedded guys.

But they still have to create a large library of peripherals and support
it(which they might solve by creating a few speedy cores and let the crowd
code and share/support peripherals), add analog blocks, and gain the trust of
the embedded community as a reliable long term supplier(which might be the one
thing intel couldn't solve - because of it's past as an unreliable embedded
supplier).

The second option is that this is mainly to motivate other embedded chip
companies guys to use it's fabs.

Anyway ,i'm grabbing the popcorn.

~~~
gte525u
The one bit I can't find anywhere in the docs released so far. Is there a
communication mechanism between the microcontroller and the main core?

It's not hard to dangle a micro off of i2c or some other bus, however, I can
definitely see the the benefit of an easy prototyping solution combining an
beefy (~100k RAM and 100Mhz CPU) real-time micro and a general purpose OS with
wifi / bluetooth LE.

------
twotwotwo
Fun thing, though obviously not quite the same: Transcend wifi SD cards are
(or at least were) running Linux on ARM, hosting a Perl CGI script(!) that
could be exploited to let you do your own thing with the card -- see
[http://haxit.blogspot.com/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-
sd-...](http://haxit.blogspot.com/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-
cards.html)

------
ChuckMcM
I went browsing around their site this morning when I got the email of the
release. I cannot say that I understand Intel's strategy here. On the one hand
they could release 'Quark' like Atmel ships AVR's or ST Micro ships STM32
chips with a data sheet and a demo board, on the other they seem to want to
jump into some sort of "Intel at System supplier" kind of thing where its
mosly proprietary interfaces and only works with their stuff.

When I look at something like the Nucleo boards[1] I see a chip company
leveraging the energy around Arduino to push their own ISA, but that is just a
form factor play AFAICT. What does Intel hope to achieve here? And can they do
that without being a crapload more "open" than they have been in the past?

[1] [http://www.mouser.com/new/stmicroelectronics/stm-nucleo-
deve...](http://www.mouser.com/new/stmicroelectronics/stm-nucleo-development-
boards/?gclid=CMzL46T21MACFZKBfgodQC4AIA)

~~~
makomk
Intel's problem is that it's a lot harder to turn their chips into a complete
system than it is AVRs or STM32, because Intel's solution is a full SoC
running Linux that requires seperate RAM and Flash chips and external power
supply circuitry that has to meet some nasty power sequencing requirements.
This is basically Intel's version of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module which
exists for much the same reason.

~~~
craigjb
Edison is the size of a postage stamp including DDR. The picture linked is of
the module plugged into a board.

~~~
rasz_pl
Thats great, but STM32 costs ~$.30, STM8 you can get down to ~$.10.

There is no room for x86 at the bottom. Nobody wants embedded chip that boots
in legacy real addressing mode to maintain that sweet sweet compatibility with
windows 3.11

------
songgao
Can anybody confirm whether the wireless chip used (BCM43340) is FullMAC or
SoftMAC? The model is not listed on either brcmsmac nor brcmsmac. The wifi
driver that comes with the source code downloaded from Intel is not in a Linux
tree and it even has IP and TCP related stuff. I'm confused.

------
skorgu
This is pretty close to something I've wanted for ages: the smallest possible
Ceph OSD. This doesn't have the right set of devices on it but it's pretty
close.

Ditch the wifi for gigabit ethernet, slap a sata controller on the pci-e and
mount it in a stackable frame with a power bus. Buy a drive, one of these
nodes and stack it on top of your existing ones. Bam your own tiny cloud you
can expand in increments of one drive (and commodity ethernet). It's probably
a commercial non-starter now that 8TB drives exist but I still love the idea.

Or now that I think about it skip the sata and just sell it with some NVMe
flash storage built in. Stackable storage bricks.

~~~
skrause
[http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-
max/](http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-max/) might be closer to
what you're looking for.

~~~
skorgu
Hey so it is, that's awesome. Thanks!

------
markokrajnc
How much power does it use? In documents I read:

Standby (No radios): 13 mW Standby (Bluetooth 4.0): 21.5 mW (BTLE in Q4-14)
Standby (Wi-Fi): 35 mW

It this turned ON and waiting on standby? Or is this turned OFF standby? And
how much does it use when CPU is working?

~~~
makomk
That's almost certainly standby as in turned off, given the figures I've seen
for previous Intel IoT boards with much lower end chips than this one.

------
revelation
Presumably its shipping now, but I can't seem to find anywhere to _buy_ it.

WLAN has been somewhat sorely lacking for these mini computers, your only
option was pretty much the rather terrible MIPS platforms made for routers.

~~~
tinco
You have to scroll to below the list of links that look like they're a footer,
and you'll see a big blue bar that shows the 'where to buy' links. It sells
for 50 bucks at Sparkfun, you can also buy the kit at makershed.

Hopefully they'll send some to Farnell so we Europeans can get a taste of it
as well.

------
Sophistifunk
Personally, I love the idea of low-spec 86 chips being available at rock-
bottom prices. It's an architecture that while far from perfect is well known,
and most of us here have a boatload of experience with it I'll wager. I'd
really like to see something similar to this but for 2 or 3x the price (it's
only $50) that includes a framebuffer, hdmi and a _fully documented_ hardware
blitter or bargain-basement GPU.

~~~
LogicFailsMe
Wouldn't that more or less be the already available Tegra K1?

~~~
Sophistifunk
It's my understanding you need to be a multi-million-dollar company to even
get NVidia to answer your calls to talk about showing you the NDA you need to
sign to get access to register-level Tegra programming docs? If I'm wrong I'd
be very happy. Intel has been really good at documenting their GPUs though. I
want to play on the metal, running under Linux with a binary blob framebuffer
driver doesn't interest me.

~~~
varelse
It's my understanding that all you have to do is develop an interesting and
popular GPU application and they will bend over backwards to help you make it
run efficiently on their hardware.

Compare and contrast doing so with giving them the finger on video because
they won't follow your marching orders.

------
Yuioup
For people like me who are too stupid to make things with it, can I use this
to replace my Raspberry Pi+RaspBMC setup? How's the performance?

~~~
cypher543
There's no video core, so no HDMI or even VGA output. Edison is designed for
things like robotics and home automation. It's not a general-purpose x86
computer.

------
makmanalp
Seems like a prime candidate for a unikernel like mirage
([http://openmirage.org/blog/announcing-
mirage-20-release](http://openmirage.org/blog/announcing-mirage-20-release))

------
ksec
Give it PIC-Express lanes with SATA Raid or Gigabit Ethernet Controller, it
will be perfect for NAS / Router.

~~~
cypher543
There are plenty of boards for that kind of application already (PC Engines
APU[1], for example). That's not really what Edison is intended for.

[1]: [http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm](http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm)

------
sireat
I couldn't find any info, but I guess one will have to wait for adapter so
Edison can output to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPD-
Link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPD-Link) that is connect Edison to most
LCD monitors.

------
polskibus
How about adding Erlang support ? It would be great to be able to program
multiple devices with OTP-level of support for mesh network topologies.

~~~
pantalaimon
Erlang is not supported on x86?

------
aswanson
What is the price?

~~~
Yuioup
Scroll to the bottom of the "More for Makers" page:

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-
yourself/maker....](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-
yourself/maker.html)

at "Where to Buy"

------
burtonator
I'd love to see Tesla Inc sue Intel saying that they stole all the tech for
their Edison Module :)

------
higherpurpose
And what exactly are you going to do with an "x86" expensive dev board with
500 Mhz Atom CPUs and 1GB of RAM? Run XP on it?

~~~
Sophistifunk
This is why we can't have nice things.

