Intel Galileo is the first in a line of

Arduino Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed unde ...

-certified development boards based on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

x86 architecture and is designed for the maker and education communities. Intel released two versions of Galileo, referred to as Gen 1 and Gen 2. These development boards are sometimes called "Breakout boards". The board was discontinued on June 19, 2017.

Technical specifications

Intel Galileo combines Intel technology with support for Arduino ready-made hardware expansion cards (called "shields") and the Arduino software development environment and libraries. The development board runs an open source

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating system with the Arduino software libraries, enabling re-use of existing software, called "sketches". The sketch runs every time the board is powered. Intel Galileo can be programmed through

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and Linux host operating software. The board is also designed to be hardware and software compatible with the Arduino shield ecosystem. Intel Galileo features the

Intel Quark Intel Quark is a line of 32-bit x86 SoCs and microcontrollers by Intel, designed for small size and low power consumption, and targeted at new markets including wearable devices. The line was introduced at Intel Developer Forum in 2013, and d ...

SoC X1000, the first product from the

technology family of low-power, small-core products. Intel Quark represents Intel's attempt to compete within markets such as the

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

and

wearable computing A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches. Wearables may be for genera ...

. Designed in Ireland, the Quark SoC X1000 is a 32-bit, single core, single-thread, Pentium (P54C/i586) instruction set architecture (ISA)-compatible CPU, operating at speeds up to 400 MHz. The Quark is seen by some as Intel's answer to

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...

, the processor design featured in smartphones and other single-board computers. At a clock speed of 400 MHz, together with 256 Mb of

DDR3 Double Data Rate 3 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR3 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) with a high bandwidth (" double data rate") interface, and has been in use since 2007. It is the higher-spee ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

and 8 Mb

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

, the Galileo is much more powerful than competing Arduino boards. The Mega 2560, for example, has a clock speed of 16 MHz, 8 Kb RAM and 256 Kb flash memory. It would be more appropriate to compare the Galileo to another

single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstrati ...

, such as the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

. The latest iteration, the Pi 3 Model B, replaced the Pi 2 Model B in February 2016. It is more powerful than the older Galileo Gen 2, featuring a 1.2 GHz CPU and 1 Gb RAM. The Pi, however, does not have any flash memory. Both Galileo boards support the Arduino shield ecosystem. Unlike most Arduino boards, the Intel boards support both 3.3V and 5V shields. The Intel development board comes with several computing industry standard I/O interfaces. The support for

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

means that Wifi, Bluetooth or GSM cards can be plugged in to the board. It also enables usage of solid state drives with the Galileo. The 10/100 Mbit Ethernet support enables the board to be connected to a LAN. It also enables accessing the Linux shel. The boards further support Micro SD, which means the available storage can be extended by up to 32 G. Other I/O interfaces include

ACPI Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, to perform power management (e.g. putting unused hardware components to sleep), auto c ...

, USB 2.0 device and EHCI/OHCI USB host ports, high-speed UART,

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...

serial port, programmable 8 MB NOR flash, and a

JTAG JTAG (named after the Joint Test Action Group which codified it) is an Technical standard, industry standard for verifying designs and testing printed circuit boards after manufacture. JTAG implements standards for on-chip instrumentation in ele ...

port for easy debug. Although the Galileo shipped with Linux, it was possible to have a custom version of Windows on both the Gen 1 and the Gen 2. This support was, however, suspended by Microsoft on 30 November 2015. Microsoft cited hardware concerns, with some specifically attributing it to the low clock speed of the Galileo. The Galileo supports the Arduino IDE running atop an unmodified Linux software stack, supported by a common open source tool chain. The board comes pre-loaded with an SPI image of Linux. Although this version (Yocto 1.4 Poky Linux) has very limited features (e.g. it does not include a Wi-Fi module), it does not require any storage devices to be added. Intel also provides more functional versions of Linux for the boards. The "SD-Card" image can be downloaded and loaded onto the board via a Micro SD card. It includes, among a multitude of modules, a Wi-Fi module, support for

OpenCV OpenCV (''Open Source Computer Vision Library'') is a library of programming functions mainly aimed at real-time computer vision. Originally developed by Intel, it was later supported by Willow Garage then Itseez (which was later acquired by In ...

to enable computer vision, ALSA for sound processing and

Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code o ...

for

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

capabilities. A more advanced IoT DevKit version is also available to enable complex IoT projects, adding for example support for OpenCV-Python. The Raspberry Pi, as well as most boards from Arduino, does not have an onboard real time clock. The Galileo boards have a real time clock, requiring only a 3V coin cell battery. The boards can therefore keep accurate time without being connected to either a power source or internet. The Galileo can be seen as truly

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, as both the schematics and the source code are freely available for download without a software license agreement. However, some argued that the hardware shouldn't be designated open source if the

processor core A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

isn't also made open-source.

Arduino ecosystem

The Arduino ecosystem has three "levels": # "Arduino" is manufactured and distributed by Arduino. # "AtHeart" identifies any board which is manufactured using an Arduino-supported processor. # "Certified" means that the board is supported by the Arduino platform, but does not use an Arduino-supported processor. The Galileo falls into the third category. Although it is the lowest level in the Arduino ecosystem, it still means that Galileo boards can be programmed using the official Arduino IDE, bought on the Arduino online shop and is compatible with Arduino peripherals such as shields.

Sales and adoption

Intel does not publish sales data on its products. In an effort to boost the ecosystem of their Quark architecture, Intel gave away 50,000 Galileo Gen 1's when it was launched. In 2014, Microsoft also handed out Galileo boards to people who signed up for its IoT program. On 30 November 2015, Microsoft suspended support for Galileo. While it is unclear what effect this had on the sales numbers of the boards, it meant that developers creating projects for Microsoft's Windows 10 IoT Core had to move to Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. On 16 June 2017 Intel announced that the 'End of Life' and last shipment date for the Galileo range is 16 December 2017.

Difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2

Intel Galileo Gen 2 Is similar to Gen 1 with the following changes: * Replaces the RS-232 console port (audio jack) with a 1x6-pin 3.3V USB TTL UART header * Adds 12-bit pulse-width modulation (PWM) * Console UART1 redirection to Arduino headers *

Power over Ethernet Power over Ethernet, or PoE, describes any of several standards or ad hoc systems that pass electric power along with data on twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. This allows a single cable to provide both data connection and electrical power to d ...

(PoE) capability (Requires installation of Silvertel Ag9712-2BR/FL power module) * A power regulation system that accepts power supplies from 7V to 15V. * Improved PWM control line means finer resolution for movement control.

References

External links