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> 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. Tur

> 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
- jldugger 11y ago
  > 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. This is one of the core thesis of the Innovator's Dilemma: the multi-billion dollar companies aren't interested in competing to serve your niche application.

makomk 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.

jldugger 11y ago
> 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. This is one of the core thesis of the Innovator's Dilemma: the multi-billion dollar companies aren't interested in competing to serve your niche application.