As the world becomes more inter connected, we will need smaller computers.It might seem a little silly to compare the modern computer to the whole of the universe, but if we’re to build an Internet of Things embedded devices (IoT) then we need to make our computers smaller – much smaller than a smartphone or a tablet.
Small computers these days are everywhere, we have all heard of the raspberry Pi mini computer that looks just like a USB thumb drive.
One of the latest micro computers is Intel’s SD card-sized Edison, a tiny board built around a two core Quark system-on-a-chip, with memory, radio and a full set of SDIO ports. Quark is Intel’s processor for the IoT, a sub-Atom (hence the name!) 32-bit device devoid of SSE and other extensions, while still supporting as many interfaces as possible. It’s also very low power, drawing less than a watt. That makes it ideal for sensor-driven devices – especially in control systems, as it’s designed for real time operating systems (so don’t expect to run Windows on Quark).
Edison’s SD card form factor makes a lot of sense; it’s small, it’s familiar, and it supports a well-documented set of interfaces. Intel is also giving Edison a SIM card pinout, making it easy to connect to wireless devices – devices that are likely to be the heart of any future sensor or control network.
One factor that links Internet of Things embedded devices is radio technology: Bluetooth Low Energy. It’s already at the heart of many of the medical sensors we’re using, but there’s more to Bluetooth LE than connectivity as it also supports operation as a low power radio beacon. That’s a mode that the folk at Phone Halo are taking advantage of in their latest device tracker. As soon as a tracker loses contact with a host device, it starts to broadcast its ID over a Bluetooth LE beacon. Other devices running the Phone Halo software will spot those beacons, and send the device location back to the Phone Halo network; offering a distributed alert service for stolen or lost devices.
We’re finally seeing the birth of a ubiquitous computing world, with the first generation of processors, sensing devices and radios on show at CES. That’s not the end point, of course. Things are going to continue to get smaller, and more highly connected.
Quark and Edison are still too big for that future, but they’re a step on the road. The ubiquitous computing pioneer Marc Weiser saw things in terms of three classes of device: tabs, pads and walls. Tabs would be the building blocks of a sensor and actuator network, with pads providing an individual user interface, and walls a collaborative computing space. We’re at a point where our familiar computing environments become the pads and the walls of our ubiquitous computing world, and where technologies like ARM’s devices and Intel’s Edison are the building blocks of our personal networks of Tabs.
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