Intel Joule Discontinued

I was about to post this:

Intel Discontinues Joule, Galileo, And Edison Product Lines | Hackaday

The first half dozen posts on Hackaday say it all:

Intel still think that their stuff is so wonderful that they don't need to try - my interest in these products disappeared when it became apparent that sensible data sheets were not part of the offering.

MK

Yep, this is why I have never designed an Intel processor into a board....

How do they expect a product line to succeed against all the ARM offerings around when they don't provide any documentation and think they can use the same very closed off and keeping their cards to their chest approach to supporting customer designs as they do with their x86 product lines?

Best Regards,

Rachael

Personally I'm quite disappointed at the announcement, I thought the documentation for Edison was really not bad, it was certainly usable. It felt a sweet spot, for anyone who wanted Linux in a product in a tiny amount of space (SD card sized). For anyone who wants such capability on a 4-layer board, there isn't a lot else to choose from, without going to a far bigger system-on-module, or perhaps the OSD3358, which needs separate WiFi/BT, it isn't integrated like Edison was. This was an experiment board I'd soldered up, but I now need to look for an alternative : (

Certainly for the Galileo, that I've used extensive recently, I never had a lack of documentation.

I've just had another look and you are right, it does seem that there is more information available about these than other Intel offerings. It's perhaps not as well organised and takes more effort to find what you need, or maybe it's just organised differently to how I would expect and that made it harder. Just looking at the Edison and it does seem like a very convenient form factor if you need to pack a full linux system into a tiny space. Maybe there is a project idea there to design something ARM based into a similar form factor

That was a board I missed out on trying, I did hear good things about it.

Jan I agree with your point of view; I have never had the opportunity to try one of the Intel series micro but I think that they are responsible of their own fall. IMHO Intel connected to the Arduno community of boards first and tried to use this sort of "archimedes lever to breach the wall of hobbyists, makers, engineers etc. with high class low (or at least average) price products family. I see two problems in their marketing politics; the first is that the term affordable price does not wear so well to many of their devices and they was trying to attach a well assessed low level market by definition. The second they focused a lot on the quality (I mean the processors class) and the boards performances keeping the association Intel-Arduino almost intact. But then they have not done a proactive community action. This is their big mistake I think, most than pricing and any other criticism that we can move to their approach. By the other side I noted during these last years that the same Arduino "pusher" site and community reserved to the Intel boards the range for "experts" or "expert makers" if you prefer while the very large market is just the newbies as the Arduino become the icon for the "first approach to the microcontorollers, project making, DIY electronics" etc. During last years I never saw the Arduino heads (Banzi & C) seriously spending time and resources in the Inter boards direction. As many other users I always had the perception that the Intel boards was just another more sophisticated product of the Arduino family. But easy, low price and popular are the three words that most defines the Arduino (Uno, Mega etc.) traditional boards. To be honest, I am sure - also reading of the projects in this community, considerations of other users and TMs etc that these are excellent boards, but the idea I have - or prejudice to be honest - is that when I should do something more complex than plying with an AVR 8 bit is moving to a TI MSP family, Cypress PSoC etc. Also because of the price and wider range of opportunities and market they have the same. It was a risky operation, those of Intel, with some wrong starting points that now they should pay for.

Enrico

Not surprised that Intel is discontinuing these Procesors/Boards.  Intel is concentrating on their x86, x64 Offerings. To this end, Intel has put Microsoft and ARM-chip Manufacturers on notice that they (Intel) will not tolerate x86, x64 Emulation on ARM-chips. I guess I am "Bi-Polar", There is my RPi-side, then there is my Windows-side. My latest WIN10 unit is a Pi-TopCEED w/ an UP-SBC. Works great. My BT, WiFi, Wireless-Keyboard/TrackPad Nubs (USB 2.0 Plugs) work under both OS's: Raspian and Windows.

USCDADNYC (NY NY USA)

Well these boards are x86 offerings, it's more the target market segment they are aiming at. Intel typically operated in the PC/Workstation and Server markets, but they wanted into the huge embedded market with their offerings, hence they came up with Atom based solutions which fit the bill for these types of applications.

I have to admit I hadn't really looked at the specs until this thread piqued my interest but they do actually look really good both in terms of outright performance and price/performance ratio. They could have done a better job of pushing these to people designing embedded systems, maybe not tried to court the Arduino market so much as this isn't really an avenue into high volume embedded product sales IMHO, and maybe they should not given up on the market quite so easily.

Best Regards,

Rachael

but they wanted into the huge embedded market with their offerings, hence they came up with Atom based solutions which fit the bill for these types of applications.

It did seem they were pushing these as the IoT solution to the problem you never knew you had ....