Intel Discontinues Quark SoCs and Microcontrollers
by Anton Shilov on January 22, 2019 9:00 AM EST
Intel has announced that it will discontinue all of its Quark-series SoCs microcontrollers. Intel’s partners will have to make their final orders for the chips this summer, whereas the company will continue to fulfil Quark orders several years down the road.
Intel’s 32-bit Quark SoCs and microcontrollers are aimed at IoT applications, including wearables, smart home devices, industrial, and other. Intel’s customers will have to make their final Quark orders by July 19, 2019. Meanwhile, the manufacturer will keep shipping its Quarks till July 17, 2022, as makers of the said devices have very long product cycles and need time to develop and replace models use the processors.
Intel Galileo. Image by Adafruit.com
Intel introduced its Quark products in late 2013 along with its Galileo mainboard carrying a Quark microcontroller. Intel also launched its Quark-based Edison microcomputer, the Curie module featuring a Quark SE processor. By now, Intel has discontinued all of its Quark-powered products, including Galileo, Edison, Joule, and Curie. Meanwhile, the latter will still be available to interested parties until June 15, 2020.
Originally meant to power emerging mass market devices, Intel’s Quark SoCs and microcontrollers have barely become popular among makers of actual products. Therefore, it is not surprising that Intel discontinues the lineup without introducing any direct replacements.
The list of Quark products set to be discontinued includes the following SKUs:
- Intel Quark SoC X1020D
- Intel Quark SoC X1000
- Intel Quark SoC X1010
- Intel Quark SoC X1021D
- Intel Quark SoC X1001
- Intel Quark SoC X1011
- Intel Quark SoC X1020
- Intel Quark SoC X1021
- Intel Quark Microcontroller D1000
- Intel Quark Microcontroller D2000
- Intel Quark SE C1000 Microcontroller
- Intel Quark Microcontroller D2000
- Intel Quark SE C1000 Microcontroller
Related Reading
- Intel Announces “Quark” SoC Family: Tiny SoCs For Tiny Devices
- Intel Announces Galileo: Quark Based Arduino Compatible Developer Board
- IDF 2014: Intel Edison Development Platform Now Shipping
Source: Intel
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SarahKerrigan - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
A cautionary lesson, from both this and 2008: Don't trust Intel's commitment to embedded, ever. If you're going to build a product with long availability requirements, or want to move your code forward across multiple generations unmodified, Intel is not a safe bet. At least with ARM, you can move your assembly code and intrinsic-using C to another vendor, as there are dozens; as far as I know, the only deep-embedded x86 vendor remaining is DMP (and maybe RDC?)Just my opinion. It would be a cold day in hell before I trusted an Intel embedded part for a design I knew was going to be around for a long time.
HStewart - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
In my opinion, this whole market is not very trustful - Raspberry PI and especial Adreno ( which is primary started ) of home built electronics devices - but I think the big reason is for both Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices have pretty much taken over the market.Besides Amazon and Google - parts most of this stuff - is for up and coming developers to experiment with - done some playing rom - no way it actually replace a setup and definitely not a computer. But it is cool to experiment with. I just think it too limited market for Intel to invest in.
thesavvymage - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
For future comments, I'd focus on not using dashes at all... Makes your comment super hard to read and it still hardly makes sense beyond a general level. Sorry for criticism if English isnt your first language.HStewart - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
Don't be so critical, I am an Asperger and likely even a Savant in nature. A problem solver professional in development of software applications with 30 years experience in computers. English writing has never been one of my high ends. At Georgia Tech, I was required to take a class with football players in English. A lot of this is because my brain thinks faster than I write. Modern web sites have word processors to help with my thought process and usually I will come back and edit something. But unfortunately AnandTech forums do not allow you edit your posts and sorry if that confuses you. By the way, except for this "-", I did not use a dash.mode_13h - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
@the (questionably) savvy mage didn't say not to use paragraphs. No one likes a wall of text.mode_13h - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
It's sure better than the same text sans dashes.IMO, there's nothing wrong with dashes. Just don't go crazy with them.
edzieba - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
2013-2022 is not a bad lifecycle for Lakemont. And don't be so quick to assume ARM code is easily portable between vendors, for That Way Madness Lies.SarahKerrigan - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
I'm not assuming. I've done it. Writing an optimized lib for Cortex-M3 Vendor A is something that carries over near-directly to Cortex-M3 Vendor B.lada - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link
The emerging open and free RISC-V ISA will gradually cater to an ARM business. Its openness and royalty-free nature helps to move from one design to another without changing compiled code, lets you compile your own RISC-V compliant (or not, or enhanced) cores into an FPGA. Founders of the ISA started to manufacture chips based on customers' requirements feature wise. So you can let them manufacture a chip for you uniquely suiting your design, including custom instructions and extensions.The best of it is complete portability across the spectrum of RISC-V (compliant) chips AND manufacturers. In addition, you can manufacture your dream embedded CPU in the future without any failing company - you're not locked to any. The ability to test own design on an FPGA and then making a chip of it is truly a blessing. And the ISA and it's implementations are very efficient, because a lot of work went into optimizing the ISA for low power, low decode complexity and small code size.
I'm curious how long it will take to really conquer the world. nVidia and WD seem to be jumping on it for their embedded controllers now...
CiccioB - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link
As long as I like the RISC-V idea of a "open source" microcontroller ISA, I would not say that portability is the best of its features when custom enhancements can be inserted into it.I mean, portability and customization aren't compatible with each other.
If I create a library that exploits a particular custom instruction to shorten computation times, it won't be usable on anything else that does not have the same added instruction. If you count only on the "legacy" part of the ISA, then you are not exploiting its customization feature.
RISC-V idea is very good and promising, but as said, customization may fragment the market, especially the embedded one when customization is mostly required.