Qualcomm Acquires Arduino, Launches the New Arduino UNO Q Single-Board Pc

Qualcomm is continuous its acquisition spree, and its newest goal is none apart from Arduino: the agency has been snapped up for an undisclosed sum, the most important user-facing consequence of which is the discharge of a brand-new Arduino UNO powered by a Qualcomm Dragonwing system-on-chip — turning the enduring improvement board into a totally standalone Linux-based single-board pc dubbed the Arduino UNO Q.

“Qualcomm has all the time been centered on differentiation on the edge,” Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s group common supervisor for automotive, industrial, and embedded Web of Issues (IoT), claimed throughout a press briefing on the acquisition. “During the last yr we’ve got made quite a lot of totally different acquisitions — the final one was Edge Impulse, which was a machine studying ops platform. Previous to that we acquired Foundries.io and at present this dialog with Arduino and the Arduino ecosystem completes our technique to have the ability to scale [and] ship the very best experiences to the developer group.”

Whereas the acquisition, monetary phrases of which haven’t been disclosed, will see Arduino turn into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, each firms say that issues will enterprise as standard: Arduino will proceed to help its current product strains no matter chip vendor, together with the recently-launched Arduino UNO R4 household with its Renesas microcontroller. “Arduino will proceed to function, help all of its current partnerships, its current merchandise, and proceed to help new merchandise because it has been,” Duggal defined in response to our questions in the course of the occasion. “Our focus goes to be on the SoC households that we help at present, so nothing goes to vary so far as how the Arduino working mannequin continues.”

Qualcomm’s major affect, then, can be in offering Arduino with entry to its personal system-on-chip designs — however not, if the corporate is to be believed, forcing it to make use of them over rival distributors’ elements. The primary fruit of this partnership: the Arduino UNO Q, a brand-new improvement board in a well-recognized kind issue — hiding the performance of a totally standalone Linux-capable single-board pc, one thing nearer to a Raspberry Pi than the sooner fashions within the Arduino UNO vary.

“It’s the most succesful Arduino UNO ever,” Marcello Majonchi, Arduino’s chief product officer, claimed of the brand new board in the course of the occasion, “due to its hybrid ‘twin mind,’ we name it, structure, that’s combining a Qualcomm chip [and] STMicro[electronics] MCU [Microcontroller Unit]. It is Linux, the Debian working system, mixed with an Arduino core operating on Zephyr [real-time operating system]. Extra importantly, with Arduino UNO Q we’re introducing Arduino App Lab, which is a brand-new built-in improvement expertise that joins collectively improvement throughout the microcontroller, the microprocessor, and the GPU [graphics processing unit], then is integrating the standard sketch improvement of Arduino with programming straight on the Linux subsystem with Python and integrates, additionally, AI fashions.”

On the {hardware} facet, the Arduino UNO Q packs numerous energy into the traditional Arduino UNO footprint. Its primary chip is the Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210, which incorporates 4 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 cores operating at as much as 2GHz, an Adreno graphics processor with 3D acceleration capabilities, and a picture sign processor (ISP) able to handing two 13 megapixel or one 25 megapixel video stream at 30 frames per second. There’s 2GB of LPDDR4 reminiscence and 16GB of eMMC storage with the Debian-based working system pre-loaded, with a 4GB/32GB variant deliberate for launch later within the yr. Each fashions embody dual-band Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity.

The microcontroller facet of issues is dealt with by an STMicro STM32U585 microcontroller as a real-time coprocessor, that includes a single 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 core operating at as much as 160MHz, 768kB of static RAM (SRAM), and 2MB of flash reminiscence. It is this which is wired into the Arduino UNO-format pin headers on the highest of the board, whereas the Qualcomm chip handles a brand-new pair of high-density board-to-board connectors on the underside — which can, we’re instructed, be suitable with a variety of service boards, together with a show service, launching within the close to future.

Elsewhere on the board are 4 user-controllable RGB LEDs, an 8×13 blue LED matrix, a Qwiic-compatible 3.3VDC I2C enlargement connector, a user-addressable push-button swap, and a distant debug connector for the microprocessor facet of issues. There’s help for USB cameras and video output by way of a USB Kind-C connector’s alternate operate mode; a JMEDIA header offers a pair of MIPI Digicam Serial Interface (CSI) inputs and a single MIPI Show Serial Interface (DSI) output. Different interfaces embody audio out and in, I2C, I3C, SPI, CAN, UART, PSSI, and general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) pins with analog to digital conversion (ADC) and pulse-width modulation (PWM) help.

All of that is designed to be accessed by the brand new Arduino App Lab, which takes over from the present Arduino IDE and offers an all-in-one improvement surroundings for dealing with each the microcontroller facet (in Wiring-flavored C) and the microprocessor facet (in Python). This, Majonchi defined, can be utilized in two modes: a conventional tethered improvement surroundings through which the Arduino UNO Q connects to a Microsoft Home windows, Apple macOS, or Linux host over USB; and a totally standalone mode, through which a monitor, keyboard, and mouse is related to the Arduino UNO Q and the App Lab surroundings runs straight on the single-board pc itself — although for this customers will want an appropriate USB Kind-C docking station, a minimum of till Arduino will get round to releasing a service board with ample connectivity.

There is a third string to the App Lab bow, too: integration with Edge Impulse, one other recently-acquired Qualcomm subsidiary. “Arduino App Lab comes with already dozens of pre-loaded utility examples,” Majonchi instructed us. “There are additionally a number of AI fashions which might be pre-trained and already built-in [as] examples, but additionally obtainable to make use of in {custom} purposes […] which might be spanning throughout all totally different use circumstances from pc imaginative and prescient to sound, speech detection, to sign processing, so as to allow any kind of use-cases from house automation to industrial robotics. And these fashions are literally offered by our associate Edge Impulse, and builders also can custom-train their fashions with an lively integration inside Edge Impulse.”

Maybe probably the most welcome shock of the joint announcement is that the Arduino UNO Q will proceed the Arduino custom of open supply improvement: the software program can be made obtainable below both the reciprocal GNU Common Public License 3 or the Mozilla Public License, the businesses have confirmed, whereas schematics and {hardware} design recordsdata can be launched below a Artistic Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license that features the power to launch clones and {custom} derivatives commercially — a win for Qualcomm, after all, as it will provide the Dragonwing chips powering all these third-party takes on the design.

The Arduino UNO Q is now obtainable to order in 2GB/16GB kind from the Arduino Retailer and official resellers at $44, with transport starting on 25 October; the 4GB/32GB variant will open for orders in November at $59 with a view to transport “by finish of yr,” Arduino has promised.