RE: So what's up at Intel?

johnbeetem — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:43:15 GMT

I'll start taking notice when there's a US$35 Atom board that competes directly with RasPi 2 and ODROID-C1.

JMO/YMMV

RE: So what's up at Intel?

e14 Contributor — Sun, 12 Apr 2015 23:26:25 GMT

While having the chance to play with the Gizmo2, I've also been putting some thought into recent developments around processing and small board computers. It seems to me that SoC designs are going to where the focus is being placed and quite rightly too. By integrating the vast majority of a computers chipset onto a single die, not only is there a monetary saving in the cost to produce a system but it also removes the vast majority of the pcb. The benefits gained also come with other disadvantages, for instance: if you take into consideration that all of those devices are going to generate a lot more heat in a smaller physical area then overheating becomes a much greater problem. Thinking along these lines, once everybody gets comfortable producing a standard range of SoC devices, pushing them forward will undoubtedly mean that more time will be spent developing more efficient cooling systems as well as designing the actual units to dissipate heat more evenly.

It appears that Intel have been dipping their toe into SoC devices for a while with Panasonic's latest consumer gear utilising Intel's SoC technology and manufacturing: http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/07/07/intels-custom-foundry-will-manufacture-future-panasonic-system-on-chips-using-intels-14nm-low-power-process

The whole SBC and SoC market is likely to become very interesting over the next few years with big name companies rolling out their own devices like NVIDIA's Tegra range, I expect there to be a frenzy of competition in this whole area in the near future.

Check out the Tegra K1 http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-k1-processor.html

Computing design is going to become a whole lot more interesting!

Lucie