Qualcomm Is Buying Arduino, Releases New Raspberry Pi-Esque Arduino Board (arstechnica.com) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Smartphone processor and modem maker Qualcomm is acquiring Arduino, the Italian company known mainly for its open source ecosystem of microcontrollers and the software that makes them function. In its announcement, Qualcomm said that Arduino would "[retain] its brand and mission," including its "open source ethos" and "support for multiple silicon vendors." Qualcomm didn't disclose what it would pay to acquire Arduino. The acquisition also needs to be approved by regulators "and other customary closing conditions."
The first fruit of this pending acquisition will be the Arduino Uno Q, a Qualcomm-based single-board computer with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor installed. The QRB2210 includes a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702 GPU, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and combines that with a real-time microcontroller "to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control." "Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family," Qualcomm said in its press release. "Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies' powerful technology stack and global reach. Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies' advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem."
CNBC notes in its reporting that this acquisition gives Qualcomm "direct access to the tinkerers, hobbyists and companies at the lowest levels of the robotics industry." From the report: Arduino products can't be used to build commercial products but, with chips preinstalled, they're popular for testing out a new idea or proving a concept. Qualcomm hopes that Arduino can help it gain loyalty and legitimacy among startups and builders as robots and other devices increasingly need more powerful chips for artificial intelligence. When some of those experiments become products, Qualcomm wants to sell them its chips commercially.
The first fruit of this pending acquisition will be the Arduino Uno Q, a Qualcomm-based single-board computer with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor installed. The QRB2210 includes a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702 GPU, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and combines that with a real-time microcontroller "to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control." "Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family," Qualcomm said in its press release. "Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies' powerful technology stack and global reach. Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies' advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem."
CNBC notes in its reporting that this acquisition gives Qualcomm "direct access to the tinkerers, hobbyists and companies at the lowest levels of the robotics industry." From the report: Arduino products can't be used to build commercial products but, with chips preinstalled, they're popular for testing out a new idea or proving a concept. Qualcomm hopes that Arduino can help it gain loyalty and legitimacy among startups and builders as robots and other devices increasingly need more powerful chips for artificial intelligence. When some of those experiments become products, Qualcomm wants to sell them its chips commercially.
please qualcomm (Score:2, Informative)
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my wet dream is to integrate RP2040 type capabilities to Arduino. Arduino can not do any real time control, and RP2040 can with its PIO. The PIO is brilliant, integrated it into the MEGA2560.
What I'd like to see is a full Linux-based ARM setup with a fast CPU and a Mega2560-like controller on the side, with interprocessor communication channels designed to support message passing between one or more threads in the Linux app and code running on the 2560, i.e. the Mega's address and data bus would have to exposed externally and they would have to share some RAM.
But maybe that's just me.
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Sounds similar to the BeagleBone boards.
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But I want it for less than $15.
Re: please qualcomm (Score:2)
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I hear you. A virtual serial port seems like bullshit to me right now. We can't unleash the bandwidth of USB, it seems, to me.
IMO, a minimum requirement for anything other than a virtual serial port would be a microcontroller that has 32-bit addressing. That way you can put some shared dual-port RAM between the microcontroller and the main CPU and use it for a pair of ring buffers.
That wouldn't really be feasible on a 16-bit chip like the ATmega2560, because you'd be cutting into your program memory too much, and program memory in those things is already very limited.
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I'm fine with Zephyr or FreeRTOS on the controller side. For working with another OS, a good RPC helps. Unfortunately there aren't very many "good" ones. Some rather powerful ones and some interesting but immature ones.
Back in the day, I liked RTLinux. Which let you do something like what you're thinking with your microcontroller idea. But it was instead it was a thread on your CPU that ran outside of Linux. With some message passing possible between the Linux side and your real-time threads. Gets a little
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Arduino support FreeRTOS on most (all?) of their boards.
The RP2040 is also supported by Arduino, so you could just use it. If you super absolutely must have the form factor I'm sure someone has designed one.
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Arduino supports (and has official boards) both RP2040 and ESP32. If a dual core ARM at 133 MHz or an Xtensa at 240 MHz is too slow then you're not very well trained.
Frankly, if you can't manage real time control with an ATMega then you're also not very well trained, but I guess I went to school when we had KHz and thought were were lucky.
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my wet dream is to integrate RP2040 type capabilities to Arduino. Arduino can not do any real time control, and RP2040 can with its PIO. The PIO is brilliant, integrated it into the MEGA2560.
There's an Arduino port for RP2040. Not sure how well it supports the PIO peripheral though, but they are working on it.
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Are you from the past?
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Oh shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Re:Oh shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Could be worse. Could be Broadcom.
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Arduino the company has been kinda irrelevant for years now. They produce a crappy IDE, but beyond that all the interesting devices and add-on boards are from third parties and based on the original Arduino model (pinout and dimensions).
The open source community will keep providing libraries, and the various Chinese brands will keep providing boards and accessories. Qualcomm couldn't kill it if they wanted to.
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Arduino ... They produce a crappy IDE ...
The Arduino IDE, while very limited and often getting in the way of advanced programmers, is nice for rapid prototyping and for introducing noobs to microcontroller programming.
Are you an experienced programmer wanting spin up a quick little project that'll scan a few i2c sensors and post the results to a USB serial port? Buy some LED matrix display at the local hamfest and want to make an etch-a-sketch on it with 2 pots from your junk drawer? Then port to an ESP32 and add WiFi? Try out some new Chinese
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Arduino ... They produce a crappy IDE ...
The Arduino IDE, while very limited and often getting in the way of advanced programmers, is nice for rapid prototyping and for introducing noobs to microcontroller programming.
I've been programming for 40 years, and awhile back needed to install VSCode to test out some Marlin changes. It's just like rainbow unicorn vomit. I know that different people have different preferences, but I simply cannot comprehend how anyone can get anything done with 10 separate panes of crap going on at the same time. Apple's Xcode system similarly lost me at some point, after a point, more is just more, showing me everything at once detracts from architecture and design considerations.
I'm not goi
"gain access to" (Score:4, Funny)
"will have to pay for"
Looks like Arduino is now a money-grab (Score:2)
Seriously, Arduino is for $2...$10 (clone) boards and the like, not $40 boards, where you can also get an Orange Pi and run a real OS like Linux on it.
Who buys genuine Arduinos? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Who buys genuine Arduinos? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think the big worry is genuine Arduinos, as the hardware and such are open-source.
It's the actual Arduino software itself - Qualcomm could easily decide to lock it up requiring a Qualcomm account and everything. Most of the magic of the Arduino is this standardized environment using standard compilers and the extensive libraries that are community developed and supported.
The hardware is uninteresting since it's just an AVR (now Microchip) microcontroller, just with a special "arduino" bootloader that lets it be easily reprogrammed.
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What could they actually lock away though? It's all open source at the moment, so even the fairly crappy IDE could be forked. The rest is just code implementing the Arudino APIs, all of which is open source, and for most of the boards wasn't even written by Arduino.
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In the hardware space as well as a lot of maker related
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If work is paying I’m buying real Arduino.
Re: Who buys genuine Arduinos? (Score:2)
Re: Who buys genuine Arduinos? (Score:1)
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My museum piece is an 86Duino ONE. It's a 32-bit x86 (Vortex 86EX) in an Arduino form factor.
Maybe not as cool as one of those Intel Edison for Arduino boards. They were on the market for such a short time I never managed to snag one. Now they're electronic waste.
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However I think most people would see the price differential (e.g. an Arduino Micro costs $15 vs $2 for a clone) and choose the clones especially if they have familiarity using them and realise they're functionally the same as they're built around the same microcontrol
Re: Who buys genuine Arduinos? (Score:2)
Oh well (Score:1)
one more us owned company to boycott
It's always darkly funny when they say that (Score:5, Insightful)
We hear this sort of pablum all the bloody time... pretty much with *every* acquisition or merger.
- "$COMPANY will retain its brand and its product line"
- "We see $COMPANY's culture as an important strength and have no desire to change it"
- "We want to assure its customers that $COMPANY will continue to be managed independently"
Do they honestly think anyone believes it anymore?
Finally more than 32KB ram (Score:2)
Most Arduino boards have specs that might have been nice during the last decade.
Re:Finally more than 32KB ram (Score:4, Insightful)
Most Arduino boards have specs that might have been nice during the last decade.
Yes, but there is a nice simplicity to an AVR microcontroller that makes them enjoyable to work with for small projects, and makes them learnable for newer hobbyists and students. ARMs are great, but they are overly complex.
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Arduino boards are a lot more powerful than the microcontrollers used in many commercial products. Hell, a lot of those super-ubiquitous 8-pin micros with no markings are like 2KB program ROM and 128 BYTES of RAM.
If you're complaining about only 32KB or RAM, you're either a shitty developer who's chosen the wrong tool for the job, or a shitty developer who can't optimize their code.
=Smidge=
When will Massimo Banzi leave? (Score:1)
Qualcomm and Arduino: What is the endgame? (Score:2)
They're like Marvell Semiconductor. No data sheets unless you are a muilimillion dollar customer who can pay for the right to access the data sheet under NDA. That makes the chips next to impossible to use by the average hobbyist, and keeps support costs to a minimum.
This also means there will be no clone Arduino boards like there was for the AVR. Of course, this is also true with RPI, but at least they make the RP2040 available in chip form at a fair price.
I really don't get this move by Q. Is Arduino goin
"I'll respect you in the morning" in 34 words (Score:1)
A: "Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family"
Whew! (Score:2)