Intel’s developer forum for China kicked of today in Shenzen. We weren’t able to attend but we’ve been following it closely. Much of the news related to mobile and tablet PCs is to be found in the forum session PDFs and we’ve already seen how Intel are launching a back-to-school initiative based around new Celeron and Pentium Baytrail-M CPUs and have published details of USB3.1.

Most of the 35 minutes keynote is focused around the ecosystem in China but it includes info on the 40 million tablet target, news about Realsense (Lenovo S440 with integrated Realsense demonstrated,) Edison (now on Atom) and SoFIA, the integrated 3G/Atom platform for Android (and possibly Windows) tablets and phones.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is not something we really cover here because most of the hardware you’ll find is headless – that is it doesn’t have any way to drive a screen. Take the Intel Edison board for example; It’s tiny, but runs using Intel Quark which doesn’t have a GPU. That’s not much good for display-oriented personal computing. The Minnowboard Max, however, runs an Atom (latest generation Baytrail-I series) E3815 single core at 1.46Ghz or (for dual-core 1.33 Ghz operation) the Atom E3825. Both have a GPU and HDMI on-board. The ‘open-hardware’ product, including memory but not including storage, starts at $99 making it perfect for project-based ultra-mobile computing.

A pre-production prototype of the MinnowBoard Max.

This is not a system you’ll be running Windows on as it’s not strictly a PC but Android 4.4, Debian and Yocto builds are going to be made available.

MinnowBoard MAX is a compact, affordable, and powerful development board for both professionals and makers. The open hardware design allows for endless customization and integration potential. It is a platform with diverse strengths that will empower developers to innovate in the deeply embedded market.

The product was announced at EE Live yesterday, is planned to be available in June and you can find out more information here.

In related news, it looks like Edison has been re-designed to run using Atom so maybe it will have a GPU after-all. We’ll keep an eye out for further information for you.

Intel had a great keynote at CES2014 yesterday and while a lot of it was outside the scope of reporting here, the Quark-based Edison PC is worth mentioning. Picture first…

That’s it! An SD-card sized PC / development board. It’s running a 400Mhz dual-core Quark CPU built on a 22nm process. There’s a WiFi and Bluetooth LE module,  memory, storage and interfaces. It may not have a video controller but it runs Linux and the idea is that it has endless possibilities at the newer edges of the Internet. Intel have developed it alongside a $1.3 million competition to stimulate the wearable and internet-of-things segment. It’s for makers!

Intel® Edison is a new Quark technology-based computer housed in an SD card form factor with built-in wireless. The product-ready, general purpose compute platform is well-suited to enable rapid innovation and product development by a range of inventors, entrepreneurs and consumer product designers when available this summer.

Intel Edison is based on 22nm Intel Quark technology for ultra-small and low power-sensitive, Internet of Things edge devices, smart consumer products and wearable computing. The product features an Intel processor and microcontroller core. The programmable microcontroller helps manage I/Os and other baseline functions, while the x86 compatible processor core brings Linux support and enables multiple operating systems to run sophisticated high-level user applications. The small compute package brings connectivity with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE*, and has LPDDR2* and NAND flash storage as well as a wide array of flexible and expandable I/O capabilities.

Intel Edison also brings the ease of Intel technology development with support for Linux and open source community software tools. The product will be compatible with accessible developer tools used by the maker community. (Source: Intel PDF)

The key here is that it’s small and very low power. Wireless power is something Intel are looking into under the umbrella of their internet-of-things work. Ambient energy is also a related topic and for screens, how about a WiFi or BT LE display matrix?

Got ideas already? More surveillance? How about some games? Beach-towel sun-monitor? Look around you and just think what you’d do with an Edison embedded in your picture frame, shoe, partners key-fob!

You can sign up for the competition here and I suspect you’ll get notified of information as it becomes available.  The competition will run in the summer. Keep an eye on the Galileo community too because it also comes under the ‘maker’ banner.

More details on the ‘make it wearable’ challenge here (PDF)