Intel introduces a small chip which is powerful enough to power prototypes. The company calls it 'Joule'. This technology could be the center of drones, robots and powerful automations because of its ability to see, collect and analyze data from the real world.
The Joule developer kit is introduced during a demo at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, California. Essentially, it is a tiny powerful computer with up-to-date parts. The chip was showed off using a pair of industrial goggles made by wearables company, PivotHead. In the demo, Joule was made to perform a volt verification on a piece of aircraft. It used no wires, no Bluetooth, no connection whatsoever because it is powerful enough to handle the calculations itself, according to The Verge.
The Joule platform supports sensors from Intel RealSense cameras as well as other sensors. This allows the device to react to a real-time environment. Despite being able to stand and compute itself, it is still supported by 802.11ac WiFi plus the ability to capture high resolution 4K videos. All the power that Joule offers is crammed into a tiny chip that is small enough to be pinched between fingers. It is about 1.8" by 0.9", which is just about the size of two quarter dollars put side by side, liliputing reported.
There are two Joule platform available after its launch: the Joule 550x and the Joule 570x. The 550x variant features 1.5GHz Intel Atom T5500 processor (64-bit) which has four cores. It also has 3GB RAM and 8GB storage capacity.
The 570x variant, on the other hand, has a 1.7GHz Intel Atom T5700 processor with 4GB of RAM and 16 GB eMMC storage. Both variants run on a Linux-based software.
The developer kit also includes an expansion board to turn the chip into a tiny developer-friendly desktop computer. The kit is now available on Newegg for $370 (complete module plus expansion board).
