Intel Aims Wearable-Class Curie Module At Students With Arduino 101 Board

by Brandon Hill — Friday, October 16, 2015, 09:00 AM EDT

It might not be cute as a button, but Intel’s button-sized Curie Compute Module (just a fancy name for a new SoC) promises to greatly advance the low-power wearables market. The chip giant first introduced Curie at CES earlier this year, but Intel today announced that the first product that will use Curie is the Arduino 101 microcontroller board. If you recall, an inventive engineer used an Arduino Pro Mini board to carry out an epic Mjolnir on unsuspecting passersby.

Unfortunately, Arduino 101 isn’t small enough to allow for a true wearable (it measures 7cm x 5.5cm) but it does open up a number of possibilities for those looking to tinker with electronics — especially in the education sector, where there is a big push to get students interested in programming.

As for the Curie SoC, it features a 32MHz, 32-bit Quark SE microcontroller, 384 kB of flash memory, 80 kB of SRAM, an integrated DSP sensor hub, a six-axis sensor complete with gyroscope and accelerometer, and a Bluetooth LE wireless radio.

“Empowering budding entrepreneurs and young students has always been a priority for Intel, and by partnering with Arduino, we are bringing the power of Intel to a new generation of makers,” explained Josh Walden, SVP and GM of Intel’s New Technology Group. “With the advanced features of the Intel Curie module embodied in the Arduino 101 board, young learners as well as developers can now bring to life truly unique, smart and connected creations.”

Arduino 101 will ship in the first quarter of 2016 for $30. In other global markets, the Arduino 101 moniker will be replaced with Genuino 101.

Tags: Intel, quark, curie, arduino 101

Intel Aims Wearable-Class Curie Module At Students With Arduino 101 Board

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