5 ms·

It would! The Curie is a wonderful little SoC. The built in BLE, Gyro and Power management make it perfect for much more than a beefy UNO clone. After seeing

by lewi 10y ago

It would! The Curie is a wonderful little SoC. The built in BLE, Gyro and Power management make it perfect for much more than a beefy UNO clone. After seeing so much press from Lady Gaga to the X Games, I got a few 101s and started deving. Got to the point I wanted to get a few boards made with it. Turns out the only way a private individual can buy a Curie chip is attached to the 101 board. Perplexed, I asked a representative a few days ago at a trade show why they were so scarce. It appears Intel, or rather the division responsible, isn't making the individual module available for purchase. That is unless, and I quote, "Your name is Oakley or similar". Which makes me a little sad as their brand messaging calls for a "Makers Movement" but doesn't give us the products they have developed for it. One thing I find particularly amusing is the 101's step counter tutorial featured on their Maker page[1]. A 7cm x 5cm pedometer with a battery management circuit that isn't mapped out on the board. Either way, I hope they release this wonderful little package they have developed. [1] https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Genuino101CurieIMUStepCounter https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Genuino101CurieIMUStepCou...

dekhn 10y ago
Why don't you just buy 101's and remove the curie chip from the 101?
- jhpankow 10y ago
  Once you've got the chip removed (which is non-trivial) you then have to prepare it to be resoldered, which would require re-balling in the case of a BGA pinout. This is beyond the scope of what a maker/hobbyist could do.
  - justinclift 10y ago
    Don't people do that with converted toaster ovens?
    - dekhn 10y ago
      Yes. This sort of thing is classic maker, and if you bought the chips from Intel directly you'd still have to integrate them onto a board.
    - Gracana 10y ago
      Re-balling is possible for hobbyists, but it's an extra tricky step that you'd need to do. Why bother when you can buy a nice ARM SoC?
vonmoltke 10y ago
> After seeing so much press from Lady Gaga to the X Games, I got a few 101s and started deving. Got to the point I wanted to get a few boards made with it. Turns out the only way a private individual can buy a Curie chip is attached to the 101 board. > Perplexed, I asked a representative a few days ago at a trade show why they were so scarce. It appears Intel, or rather the division responsible, isn't making the individual module available for purchase. That is unless, and I quote, "Your name is Oakley or similar". This has been my biggest frustration with Intel. They will not sell their solder-on chips to distributors for some reason. I feel like they could make some major inroads into ARM-dominated markets if they made getting their products much easier. After all, how are you supposed to become an "Oakley" if you can;t get off the ground in the first place? Plus, if you get there on ARM chips, what is your motivation to suddenly switch to Intel once you are big enough for them to give a shit about you?
- makomk 10y ago
  From what I can tell, the whole thing is basically a PR stunt. Intel are less interested in actually displacing ARM than they are in generating lots of publicity about how they're part of that hip new IoT thing. They've funded an entire TV show called America's Greatest Makers to try and associate the Intel Curie with wearables and the maker movement, done a whole bunch of high-profile tie ins with the X Games, Lady Gaga, Arduino, BMW, etc but they've no interest in actually making it available unless it'll give them publicity. It seems to be impossible to find official power consumption figures for it anywhere either, and the documentation is lacking in general.
  - mbanzi 10y ago
    The Curie is a nice little SOC and it will be available to purchase. If you read the press release associated to the recent internal reorg at Intel they mention IoT as one of their focus markets.
- awalton 10y ago
  Intel isn't "Papa's Fabless Semi Company", and they've got better things to be doing with their expensive fabs than running chips through them to sit on shelves for the rest of time, hoping that someone comes along and buys them. I completely understand why Intel's not interested in wasting a ton of money doing a big production run of these chips, and then having to worry about things like the product's lifecycle without a large enough financial incentive to back it. That isn't to say "they won't sell their solder on chips to distributors," because they absolutely do: Go to Mouser, select Intel, and look - Quarks and Atoms galore, even high end networking chips, all available for purchase. One of the sad things I've learned first hand about the tech business is that even profitable small products are just not interesting to billion dollar companies. You need large enough revenues to make a splash as well, and these tiny MCUs selling at quantities of 10K here or 20K there just isn't enough to make Intel want to work for it. Furthermore, if Intel wants to compete with these SoC vendors, they need to start acting like them - the Curie being a good example of that. They built a custom chip to do what their customers asked of them, and now they're selling it directly to those customers. Everything they're doing is fitting the strategy they've laid out.
mbanzi 10y ago
AFAIK The part will be sold through the usual distributors for people to be able to make your own boards.. It wouldn't make any sense for Intel to do all this work and not make the processor available for sale.

by lewi 10y ago

dekhn 10y ago

Why don't you just buy 101's and remove the curie chip from the 101?

jhpankow 10y ago
Once you've got the chip removed (which is non-trivial) you then have to prepare it to be resoldered, which would require re-balling in the case of a BGA pinout. This is beyond the scope of what a maker/hobbyist could do.
- justinclift 10y ago
  Don't people do that with converted toaster ovens?
  - dekhn 10y ago
    Yes. This sort of thing is classic maker, and if you bought the chips from Intel directly you'd still have to integrate them onto a board.
  - Gracana 10y ago
    Re-balling is possible for hobbyists, but it's an extra tricky step that you'd need to do. Why bother when you can buy a nice ARM SoC?

vonmoltke 10y ago

> After seeing so much press from Lady Gaga to the X Games, I got a few 101s and started deving. Got to the point I wanted to get a few boards made with it. Turns out the only way a private individual can buy a Curie chip is attached to the 101 board. > Perplexed, I asked a representative a few days ago at a trade show why they were so scarce. It appears Intel, or rather the division responsible, isn't making the individual module available for purchase. That is unless, and I quote, "Your name is Oakley or similar". This has been my biggest frustration with Intel. They will not sell their solder-on chips to distributors for some reason. I feel like they could make some major inroads into ARM-dominated markets if they made getting their products much easier. After all, how are you supposed to become an "Oakley" if you can;t get off the ground in the first place? Plus, if you get there on ARM chips, what is your motivation to suddenly switch to Intel once you are big enough for them to give a shit about you?

makomk 10y ago
From what I can tell, the whole thing is basically a PR stunt. Intel are less interested in actually displacing ARM than they are in generating lots of publicity about how they're part of that hip new IoT thing. They've funded an entire TV show called America's Greatest Makers to try and associate the Intel Curie with wearables and the maker movement, done a whole bunch of high-profile tie ins with the X Games, Lady Gaga, Arduino, BMW, etc but they've no interest in actually making it available unless it'll give them publicity. It seems to be impossible to find official power consumption figures for it anywhere either, and the documentation is lacking in general.
- mbanzi 10y ago
  The Curie is a nice little SOC and it will be available to purchase. If you read the press release associated to the recent internal reorg at Intel they mention IoT as one of their focus markets.
awalton 10y ago
Intel isn't "Papa's Fabless Semi Company", and they've got better things to be doing with their expensive fabs than running chips through them to sit on shelves for the rest of time, hoping that someone comes along and buys them. I completely understand why Intel's not interested in wasting a ton of money doing a big production run of these chips, and then having to worry about things like the product's lifecycle without a large enough financial incentive to back it. That isn't to say "they won't sell their solder on chips to distributors," because they absolutely do: Go to Mouser, select Intel, and look - Quarks and Atoms galore, even high end networking chips, all available for purchase. One of the sad things I've learned first hand about the tech business is that even profitable small products are just not interesting to billion dollar companies. You need large enough revenues to make a splash as well, and these tiny MCUs selling at quantities of 10K here or 20K there just isn't enough to make Intel want to work for it. Furthermore, if Intel wants to compete with these SoC vendors, they need to start acting like them - the Curie being a good example of that. They built a custom chip to do what their customers asked of them, and now they're selling it directly to those customers. Everything they're doing is fitting the strategy they've laid out.

mbanzi 10y ago

AFAIK The part will be sold through the usual distributors for people to be able to make your own boards.. It wouldn't make any sense for Intel to do all this work and not make the processor available for sale.