Intel’s SD card-sized computer will be larger than expected

Back at CES, Intel made a big deal of the fact that it could squeeze a Linux-based PC with Bluetooth and WiFi into the size and shape of an SD card. However, with just a few months to go before the launch of these miniscule Edison development boards, it looks like the chip-maker has changed tack. Intel has been forced to admit that, while it continues to work on Quark, the Edison devices coming this summer will be “slightly larger” than was first claimed.

Intel has announced an upgrade to its yet-to-launch Edison embedded computing platform which looks more like a ground-up rethink of the whole project, ditching the company’s flagship Quark processor for tried-and-tested Atom and losing the tiny SD card form factor. Intel unveiled Edison in January of this year as part of its renewed focus on embedded and particularly wearable computing technologies. Prototype-proven and in a product-ready design, Intel claimed at the time, Edison was the second outing for the company’s low-power Pentium-based Quark processor which had previously launched in the hobbyist-oriented Galileo development board.