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Intel starts shipping the Atom powered MinnowBoard

by Mark Tyson on 31 July 2013, 09:30

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

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The MinnowBoard from Intel has started to ship. This 4.2-inch square board is basically a caseless "low cost" x86 PC made for "the developer and maker community". The board, which costs $199 and is now available to buy (including in the UK), is powered by an Intel Atom E640 (1GHz, 32bit) processor and Intel GMA 600 media accelerator,  1GB of DDR2 system memory is installed and it comes with the Angström Linux distribution.

click to enlarge

The MinnowBoard is the first such circuit-board PC to ship with an Intel x86 chip installed. It is also Intel's first open-source design for developers and enthusiasts. If Intel has been eyeing the growing popularity of developer boards such as the Raspberry Pi or Arduino it forgot to check the price tag of these competitors. Nevertheless some x86 enthusiasts and developers may well be willing to pay for it.

MinnowBoard hardware specifications:

  • Processor -  Intel Atom E640 @ 1GHz (32bit)
  • Chipset – EG20T Intel Platform Controller Hub
  • GPU – Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 600
  • System Memory – 1 GB DDR2 RAM
  • Storage – 4 MB SPI Flash (for Firmware),  micro SD card slot and SATA
  • Video Output – SDVO to DVI (over HDMI connector)
  • Audio -  1/8″ (3.5mm??) jack line Input and Output
  • I/O: 1x SATA2 3Gb/sec, 2x USB host ports + 1x micro USB device, 1x Serial debug via Serial (UART 0) to USB conversion (mini-USB-B port), 10/100/1000 Ethernet, PCI Express
  • Expansions: 8x Buffered GPIO pins, 2x GPIO controlled LEDs, 4x GPIO switches, System Firmware Flash Programming Header compatible with Dedi-Prog programmer
  • Board Dimensions – 10.67 x 10.67 cm

The MinnowBoard is expandable via daughter cards called 'Lures'. These can be "custom developed to expose features and interfaces as required for developer applications". Examples already available for reference include a MiniPCIe/mSATA Lure and an Automotive Lure.

As mentioned above, the MinnowBoard comes with Angström Linux and it is supported by the Yocto Project embedded Linux build system. The system has UEFI Firmware for booting.

If you are interested in this new computer system there is an established community site already available with various news, resources and forums available.

HEXUS Forums :: 15 Comments

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Posted by Wozza63 - Wed 31 Jul 2013 10:01
For the extra price compared to the Pi I'd expect a lot more power, I'd rather buy a cheap PC at that price and it would be much more powerful. This is too big as well, Pi is small and can be attached to different things like a robot or on the back of your TV
Posted by raven1001 - Wed 31 Jul 2013 10:09
It's Intel, was always gonna be overpriced.
Posted by sykobee - Wed 31 Jul 2013 10:31
So it's vastly more expensive than the Raspberry Pi and it has none of the ecosystem, and it's not even cute and tiny.

The only thing it does have is that it is more powerful - barely so. It's less powerful than other boards like the $89 ODROID U2 (quad-core 1.7GHz Cortex A9, 2GB RAM).

$199 is a ludicrous price, $79 would be more reasonable.
Posted by ThermalDroid - Wed 31 Jul 2013 10:52
Can't you get a fully fledged chromebook for that much?
Posted by scaryjim - Wed 31 Jul 2013 11:10
lol, no. not for £130.

The point here is that there is already a lot of investment in optimising for embedded x86 out there (read some of the AMD articles recently about AMDs complimentary x86 and ARM roadmaps, for example). While this board probably won't appeal that heavily to people who are just starting out with programming and want a cheap fun toy, it will almost certainly appeal to more serious hobbyists who are already conversant with embedded development for x86, and it's a damn site cheaper than most industrial/embedded x86 boards.

One thing it might do, of course, is persuade AMD to look at releasing similar dev boards based on their embedded APUs, and that could only be a good thing :)

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