14 DAY TRIAL // People might not recognize Arduino by name, but that shouldn't be taken as evidence to the relevance of the brand. It is, after all, the world's premier prototyping platform, enough so that Intel decided it could put it to use.
Long story short, Intel has entered a partnership with Arduino, which means that we'll soon see a new batch of prototyping boards.
Artists, designers, DIY lovers, even people without technical backgrounds, will use them to make interactive environments and objects.
In fact, there already is such a board. Called Galileo, it runs an open source Linux OS with Arduino software libraries, called "sketches," for scalability and re-use of existing software.
An Intel Quark SoC X1000, the first from Intel Quark technology family of low-power, small-core products (32-bit single-core CPU) is assisted by 10/100Mb Ethernet, SD, USB 2.0, EHCI/OHCI USB host ports, ACPI, PCI Express and a JTAG port, plus programmable 8 MB NOR flash and high-speed UART, RS-232 serial port.
Sales will start at the end of November, for an unknown price.