Intel Puts a PC Into an SD Card-Sized Casing

New submitter mpicpp points out that Intel has unveiled a PC called Edison, which fits into a casing the size of an SD card. "Edison is based on Intel’s Quark chip, which it launched last year as its attempt to muscle in on that other flavour-of-the-month market: the so-called Internet of Things. It also reflects the company’s new-found keenness on the 'maker' community. Quark, a 22nm low-power x86 processor with two cores, sits inside Intel’s Arduino-compatible Raspberry Pi-alike Galileo board computer. Edison takes the same chip, connects it to a wee bit of LPDDR2 memory and Flash storage, and plugs in Bluetooth 4.0 Smart — aka LE — and Wi-Fi for broader connectivity."

Re:So, can it play Crysis at full framerates, or..

[spire3661]

If you want bigger, go with the new Bay Trail Atoms. Intel is scaling up and down the spectrum, from HPC to embedded) These particular devices are not meant for human interfacing or running a UI, but for the Internet of Things(really hate that name) and ubiquitous computing.

Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out you can install linux on a transcend wifi SD card. [hackaday.com]

On a related note: Why am I not surprised that slashdot is months behind on this kind of thing and only report it when it becomes a slashvertisement?

Yes, it DOES run Linux

[CajunArson]

Summary didn't mention it, but it does run Linux, and having access to standard Linux on a device this small is actually a very big deal. We're talking a physical/power profile that's down at high-end Arduino levels but with vastly more powerful software capabilities.

Re:So, can it play Crysis at full framerates, or..

[afidel]

The Pentium was superscaler, the Pentium Pro and Pentium II added out of order execution and were based on microcode internals with a translation frontend which is very, very different from the 486.

Re:So, can it play Crysis at full framerates, or..

[TubeSteak]

but over time (around 8 months) I was forced to set processor affinity for the high-end render apps down to just half the cores, lest it just kick out and shut down the laptop.

Sounds like your heat sink got a bit dusty and the CPU was overheating.
Nothing that can't be fixed with a can of compressed air (or even a few good blows into the intake/exhaust vents).