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  • Author Author: spannerspencer
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Your Thoughts on Intel's New TinyTILE Platform

spannerspencer

I've just been doing the rounds here at element14, and thought you might like a quick insiders' look at the the new SBC on the block; Intel's TinyTILE. It's a very neat little package, and I like to think that you guys have a similar mindset to myself when it comes to a new board -- the form factor is every bit as important as the pricing.

 

Not that I know right now what kind of price tag you can expect to see dangling from the TinyTILE (it's looking like it'll be around the $30 mark, similar to its bigger brother), but the size of it conjures up some very interesting project prospects. Let's take a look at the silicon and solder of it.

 

TinyTILE: A Mini Genuino 101. Kinda.

I suppose that if you wanted to sum up the TinyTILE in the time it takes to chew a Fruit Pastel, that's how you'd pitch it. A miniaturised Genuino/Arduino 101, and that's a pretty mouthwatering flavour, no?

 

"TinyTILE is an Intel Curie module based board," the official blurb tells us, continuing, "measuring approx 35mm x 26mm." Noice! That's deliciously postage stamp sized. And being that it's an adaptation of the Genuino 101, you can program it either using the Arduino IDE or Intel's own ISPC (Intel Software Platform for Curie) software.


The facts are these:imageimage

  • Low-power 32-bit Intel Quark microcontroller

  • 384kB flash memory

  • 80kB SRAM

  • Low-power integrated DSP sensor hub and pattern matching technology

  • Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

  • 6-axis sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope

  • Battery charging circuitry (PMIC)

 

Low power consumption, Bluetooth, built-in sensors and the option for battery power gives me the impression that we're looking at a great solution for always-on, remote applications. All very IoT, and possibly even wearable tech given it's core focus on inherent motion sensing.

 

First TinyTILE Impressions

The element14 crew just previewed the TinyTILE for crowds at the Intel Developers Conference in San Francisco, so early reactions to the hardware are imminent.

 

Given it's such a new piece of kit, we're also waiting on some of the finer details (a launch date, for one, currently expected around and deeper imagery but in the meantime I wanted to hear what you guys thought of TinyTILE, and what kind of projects you envisage it being capable of. Please go nuts with your TinyTILE ideas and suggestions in the comments.

 

Oh, and if you're looking for a bit of inspiration, here's a project that invades your dog's privacy with impressive ease while you're at work!

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Intel does need to do a better job of documenting it but they do give a fair amount of additional information if you talk to them rather than just poking around their website and using the Arduino 101 stuff. 

     

    There's a lot going on with the Curie module that hasn't fully made the rounds because it's buried in documentation that hasn't been available to the general public for long and isn't easy to locate even if you have it.

     

    First is the Quark SE (I'm not certain if it's exactly the C1000 but it's closely related if not) that others have mentioned.  It alone has 3 cores -- an x86 (no FPU or HT), an ARC core (with single precision FP and some other DSP extensions -- bit like a low end Cortex-M4) and a neuromorphic pattern matching ASIC(ish) core licensed from General Vision based on their Neuromem CM1K but with fewer neurons.  The ARC is where most of your code runs if you use the Arduino tools.  The general idea is you do your IO/DSP stuff on the lower power consumption (but same clock) ARC and only wake the x86 for certain types of heavy lifting. These are all on a single die with a high speed bus interconnecting them along with the integrated shared memory and flash.  The memory specs bandied about are somewhat misleading as there's both shared memory and local memory for the different cores.

     

    Second, there are 3 other chips in the module: a charge controller (I forget the brand but it's well known), a MEMS IMU chip from Bosch and a BLE chip from Nordic Semiconductor (nRF51, I think) packaged in the module along with the Quark SE.  It really is a module -- a thin PCB with multiple wafer level chips including one on the bottom between the two sets of solder pads.

     

    The x86, ARC, IMU and nRF can all communicate with each other independently so you can selectively power down anything to conserve battery.  The IMU chip also lets you power down the gyro independently which is a good idea if you don't need it since it's most of the chip's power draw.

     

    The Neuromem core is probably one of the most interesting things that separates it from any other solution -- though oddly it's barely mentioned and always talked about in very oblique terms by Intel.  General Vision is the best source of info on it.  Note, you can download a library from General Vision's website that works with the Arduino 101 if you want to play with the pattern matching tech and they have desktop software to help you design and deploy solutions for it.   General Vision uses terminology that makes it sound like a classic neural network but it's quite different than that.   Still, it can be incredibly powerful for similar sorts of tasks.  Intel also offers their own library for it if you use their Zephyr distro and license their IQ libraries.

     

    There are a few things I wish they'd done differently.  First, it really needs a bit more memory -- if you use their Zephyr distro, there's hardly any left for your application.  Second, in some cases the height is a problem but more area might not be and breaking out the components yourself would cost a LOT more.  Third, I wish they'd used a later nRF chip -- one that is firmware upgradable to BLE 4.2.  Fourth, there's a bug that forces you to add some external components if you don't want it to drain your battery -- the low power cutoff in the power management setup was done incorrectly and it's a hardware issue not firmware.  Fifth, it's a bit tricky if not impossible to get full throughput over BLE with their current firmware.

     

    Finally, the documentation is pretty light particularly for low level firmware developers and you are left to glean what you can from their Zephyr OS code.  I believe they are working on some of these things.

     

    Anyway, it took awhile to dig through and figure all that out so I figured it was worth passing along here.

  • This is a great addition to the Arduino 101. Does anyone know when it will be available?

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    If you want good docs, or a company who has the slightest idea how to service normal customers (you are not Lenovo, Acer, Apple, Dell, nor HP, and you're not buying millions of Xeons for your data center... are you?), you should consider other products from other companies, maybe.