The chip manufacturer has crammed Joule full of technology found in a regular PC: a quad-core, 64-bit Atom processor, 4k graphics, 802.11ac connection and DDR4 memory functions.
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What’s the catch? The price, where the Joule doesn’t come close to the insanely cheap Raspberry Pi 3. A better version of Intel’s new minicomputer was sold this week at the Intel Developer Forum, IDF, for $369.99, which corresponds to approximately SEK 3,120. Raspberry Pi 3, on the other hand, costs no more than SEK 3-400. Both computers support the Linux and Windows 10 IoT Core systems.
The areas of use for Joule are said to be many. Robots, drones, smart gadgets and VR headsets are all seen as possible candidates to have a Joule stuffed into them. Joule supports Intel’s 3d Realsense camera, which can recognize gestures, measure distance and recognize human emotions.
Apart from the price competition, Intel’s challenges mainly consist of attracting the developers. They have struggled with this in the past, and many projects that used Intel’s board computers have been run by the company itself.
At the IDF yesterday, Intel demonstrated how Joule could work in a barman robot and a motorcycle helmet. But perhaps the most interesting demonstration concerned a pair of smart glasses, which assisted a quality control with real-time analysis and informed the same about inaccuracies in products.
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