Intel aims to axe their Joule, Galileo, and Edison SoCs for makers

Single-board computers are great for creators of IoT devices or learners who want to experiment with programming. (Source: Digital Trends)

Intel's Galileo, Jules, and Edison single-board computers will come to an end after this year, according to the company's internal documents. It isn't clear what product(s), if any, will replace them.

Douglas Black, Published 06/20/2017

The Raspberry Pi might be the most popular single-board computer (SoC) right now, but they've never been the only game in town. For years, Intel has offered Galileo, Edison, and Joule single-board computers for makers and Internet of Things (IoT) projects. Intel's offerings were never as price-competitive as the cheap-as-chips Pi, but they did offer a lot more power. Now, it seems that Intel will be dropping these lines of single-board computers after this year.

According to documents released that include timelines for each of the products, all three of Intel's SoCs will stop shipping by the end of 2017. No specific reason was given for cutting the company's lines of maker-focused SoCs. One possibility is that the Edison and Joule boards both utilized Atom processors, which Intel announced in early 2016 they would be dropping. (The Galileo is an older design using an obsolete Quark CPU.) In light of recent developments between Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, this move raises more questions on where exactly Intel intends to focus in the future, as IoT was one of their recent areas of growth.