Intel Joule is a high performance Atom-powered IoT module targetted at hardware developers

Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) is underway at San Francisco, and Intel has some good news for hardware developers working in the IoT space. It has unveiled Joule, which is a high performance Atom powered IoT kit. Intel Joule is the successor to the Intel's Galileo, Edison and Curie line of IoT kits which were based on the Intel Quark SoC

Intel is hoping the Joule module to be used in applications as varied as drones, robotics and with support from Intel's RealSense technology to be used in VR and AR applications as well. There isn't much detail on the graphics processing power of the Joule, but according to some websites, the Joule supports 4K video capture and display.

The Intel Joule comprises two variants – the Joule 570X and Joule 550X. Unlike its predecessors which were based on a combination of Atom Silvermont cores and low power Quark CPU cores, the Joule uses Intel's Broxton-M platform – which was initially meant to be used in consumer devices but was cancelled when Intel decided to move out of the mobile chipsets space.

Both the variants use the Intel Atom Broxton-M SoC but with varying clock speeds. The Joule 570X uses 4x Goldmont cores clocked at 1.7GHz which can turbo to 2.4GHz and this is paired with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 16GB eMMC storage. On the other hand the Joule 550X uses 4x Goldmont cores clocked at 1.5GHz with no turbo feature, along with 3GB LPDDR4 RAM and 8GB eMMC storage option.

Both the Joule 570X and Joule 550X come support 802.11ac Wi-Fi along with Bluetooth 4.1. The I/O connectivity options are also similar for both the boards such as USB 3.0, GPIO, UART, MIPI camera and display interfaces and so on. The board measures 48 x 24 x 3.5mm. This is slightly larger than the Intel Edison board.

The Intel Joule will support different operating systems, with a new Linux distro meant specifically for this hardware being the default OS. Intel is calling it the Reference Linux OS for IoT. Canonical Ubuntu Core, Windows 10 IoT Core are also supported.

The Intel Joule 570X is on sale for $369 which comes to approx Rs 25,000, and will be available with Intel partners from next month.

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