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Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

qualcomm.com

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Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#351

Post by [deleted] »

sgerenser wrote: post #302
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gap between Google’s and Apple’s SoCs is insane. Current Pixels bench at around a third of what current iPhones do. Not that performance matters to all users, but with how much Pixels cost you have to ask yourself what it is you’re paying for. Even if you don’t care for Apple, for a little more you can get a competitor for a Snapdragon.

It's definitely not that bad for the Pixel 10. One source[0] shows Geekbench 6 scores of 3701 single core and 9460 multicore for iPhone 17 (maybe add 5% more on each on the iPhone 17 Pro). While the Tensor G5 in the Pixel 10 is at 2345 single/6581 multi. So around 63-70% of the speed of the latest iPhone. Still a pretty poor showing but a far cry from 1/3 the speed. [0] https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphone-17-vs-p…

[deleted]

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#352

Post by michaelt »

MountDoom wrote: post #265
DamonHD wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I designed a consumer product based on a respun Uno, that has sold >500k units. The toolchain and hardware remains pretty capable, and can run super low power with care (~1 microamp most of the time).

But why? You can have the same chip for much less. The "toolchain" is just a bit of syntactic sugar around existing languages and tools, but more to the point, nothing stops you from using it with your own hardware. I'm not doubting you, just sincerely curious.

If they've done 500k units, "based on a respun Uno" almost certainly means "there's a atmega328p on the PCB, a 16MHz crystal, and some points granting access to the serial and reset pins"

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#353

Post by MisterTea »

I don't have any faith in them doing anything good. Feels like the microcontroller ecosystem is going to get replaced with a quad core application CPU running Kubernetes on Linux while a companion microcontroller runs 5 lines of c code to blink an LED.

Are we going to get datasheets or are we getting Raspberry Pi 2: nodatasheet boogaloo and the community has to spend the next 5 years reverse engineering the fuckin thing while loading binary blobs.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#354

Post by 0xTJ »

This new product could be neat, but it just doesn't have even the slightest appeal that an MCU-based Arduino does to me. I would also have concerns about the enshittification of Arduino in general.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#355

Post by wat10000 »

xg15 wrote: post #222
MountDoom wrote: post #200

The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts. Every time a big player gets involved, they think they can change this. A decade ago, Intel tried that back in the day with Galileo / Edison, and tellingly, they came up with the same "ideas": IoT / AI. If you're doing cheap IoT trinkets, you're never going to pay extra for a brand. You're going to buy th…

I wonder if even inside the hobbyist space, Arduino got obsoleted by the Raspberry Pi and its clones/compatible devices. Basically, if you already got the skills to work with "bare" microcontrollers, you won't need all the simplification and handholding that Arduino provides and you can just buy the individual chips and fully utilize the tiny form factor and low power requirements. If you want to learn programming mi…

Getting a full-fledged PC is an anti-feature for a small project. I don't want to fart around with a Linux install just to set the thing up. I don't want to worry about SD card longevity or power supply compatibility. And I definitely don't want to spend $50+. I'll buy a cheap Arduino-compatible board that will immediately run whatever code I load it with. I've built several Arduino projects and RPi would have been more annoying and much more expensive.

The RPi Pico looks great for this, but that's pretty much an Arduino equivalent. You can even used the Arduino IDE with it.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#356

Post by schappim »

geerlingguy wrote: post #3

Additionally, they're launching their first joint product, the $44 Uno Q SBC, which has a Dragonwing SoC and STM32 microcontroller on an Uno form factor board[1]. It seems like Arduino will keep their brand, maintain their existing product lines, and continue building devices using other vendor's chips (besides Qualcomm), etc... but as with all acquisitions—I wonder how long that state of affairs will last. Alternati…

This reminds me of the Arduino Intel Galileo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Galileo

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#357

Post by nrclark »

geerlingguy wrote: post #260
ACCount37 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I checked: there are board schematics for Uno Q there - but no datasheets or SDK or manuals or any documentation whatsoever for the QRB2210 SoC itself. Yep, it's Qualcomm alright.

Take it with a grain of salt, but the rep I've been in contact with said they'd be releasing more on the SoC...

If I had a dollar for every time a Qualcomm rep promised me something that never actually happened, I'd be a hundredaire.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#358

Post by jajuuka »

geerlingguy wrote: post #3

Additionally, they're launching their first joint product, the $44 Uno Q SBC, which has a Dragonwing SoC and STM32 microcontroller on an Uno form factor board[1]. It seems like Arduino will keep their brand, maintain their existing product lines, and continue building devices using other vendor's chips (besides Qualcomm), etc... but as with all acquisitions—I wonder how long that state of affairs will last. Alternati…

I don't think Qualcomm bought them to destroy them. I think they see Arduino as a gateway. Instead of hoping students will learn ARM it's more reasonable to leverage Arduino's simple nature to act as an on-ramp for more low level developers. I wouldn't be surprised if Arduino IDE saw a revamp to better support jumping the gap between the Arduino to Snapdragon.

ST and TI do the same thing with their boards too and it's not a bad strategy.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#359

Post by spookie »

schlauerfox wrote: post #332
spookie wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a bad idea to rely on Microsoft in some manner

VSCodium is a de-microsoft'd version available. Still missing some of the features that aren't licensed the same.

Missing "some features" is an understatement. I really value what those folk are doing, but the lack of extensions such as the ones for C/C++ from Microsoft really just make it subpar.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#360

Post by estimator7292 »

numpad0 wrote: post #307
andoando wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite remember, but I don't think I installed anything extra for ESP32. But PlatformIo with VSCode has it and was extremely easy to setup.

You must have done File -> Preferences... -> Additional board manager URL -> OK, and clicked Tools -> Board -> Board manager... -> esp32 by Espressif Systems -> Install. And that's like, I think installing VSCode itself can be more scary, so...

If youbuse PlatformIO everthing Just Works out of the box. Acquiring board files and such is handled behind the scenes
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