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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:

  • 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!

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  • Hi Spanner,

     

    That's a tiny size! And standard sized pins for ease of use without the Arduino header spacing difficulty.

    This, and the Genuino 101 seem like true modern-day successors for original Arduino : )

    What would be cool would be underlying code/RTOS that would allow uploading it directly via BTLE from

    your phone. Deploy it outdoors, and be able to upgrade the application without having to plug into it basically! : )

  • in reply to shabaz

    Until Intel publish proper data sheets for this and related processors the whole thing remains a huge puffed up PR campaign like "Intel Inside" but with less detail. I've looked a few times and there just isn't a proper Quark datasheet. What we do know is that its an 8086 based architecture clocked at  a rather slow 32MHz with only 80k of RAM and 384 k of flash.

     

    So that's about as much welly as an early ST Cortex ARM M3 micro.

     

    Intel will need to do a lot more (including publishing data !!!!) to even slightly dent the ARM grip on the small embedded systems market.

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Hi Michael,

     

    My theory is that there is more information they would be willing to share, but that they do not have a mechanism internally for getting it out to individuals because they've never had to do it much apart from B2B. They seem willing to answer individual Q&A on technical topics, and so far I've not pressed them for chip-level documentation but it appears they have been willing to answer things not in their datasheet for their boards (e.g. I was curious about the temperature range for some of their recent offerings, the details in the user docs was not clear) and they clarified it.

    It is still only approaching 1% of  BeagleBone/TI depth of publication however : (

    Their boards look designed to the same finish as their high-end server boards so perhaps they are re-using existing resources/procedures and those teams are not geared up for the level of documentation we want yet.

    I think the Curie module ships on its own too (or will do - I have not checked recently) so somewhere they may have module-level info for that, but again it is probably lightweight documentation. I don't get the impression (like another SBC!) that there is deliberate hiding of detail going on. I could be wrong, basically this entire response is lots of speculation.

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  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Hi Michael,

     

    My theory is that there is more information they would be willing to share, but that they do not have a mechanism internally for getting it out to individuals because they've never had to do it much apart from B2B. They seem willing to answer individual Q&A on technical topics, and so far I've not pressed them for chip-level documentation but it appears they have been willing to answer things not in their datasheet for their boards (e.g. I was curious about the temperature range for some of their recent offerings, the details in the user docs was not clear) and they clarified it.

    It is still only approaching 1% of  BeagleBone/TI depth of publication however : (

    Their boards look designed to the same finish as their high-end server boards so perhaps they are re-using existing resources/procedures and those teams are not geared up for the level of documentation we want yet.

    I think the Curie module ships on its own too (or will do - I have not checked recently) so somewhere they may have module-level info for that, but again it is probably lightweight documentation. I don't get the impression (like another SBC!) that there is deliberate hiding of detail going on. I could be wrong, basically this entire response is lots of speculation.

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