Even Microsoft wants a piece of the development board market made famous by Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
Microsoft has teamed up with Intel and hardware maker CircuitCo to design the $300 "Sharks Cove," now available for pre-order. Described as a "development board that you can use to develop hardware and drivers for Windows and Android," it contains an Intel Atom Z3735G, a quad-core chip with speeds of 1.33GHz to 1.83GHz. It has 1GB of RAM, 16GB of flash storage, and a MicroSD slot.
Microsoft made its pitch in a blog post this past weekend:
This “Windows compatible hardware development board” is designed to facilitate development of software and drivers for mobile devices that run Windows, such as phones, tablets, and similar System on a Chip (SoC) platforms.
At $299, this is a board that we believe will find a home with Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) and hardware enthusiasts alike. That price not only covers the cost of the hardware but also includes a Windows 8.1 image and the utilities necessary to apply it to the Sharks Cove. When you additionally consider that the Windows Driver Kit 8.1 can pair with Visual Studio Express and are both free with a valid MSDN account, the initial outlay for Windows driver developers is a lot less cost prohibitive than it once was.
"The Intel Sharks Cove board supports development of devices and drivers that use a variety of interfaces, including GPIO, I2C, I2S, UART, SDIO, USB, and MIPI for Display and Camera," the Sharks Cove site says. (See full specs here.)
At $300, Sharks Cove is significantly more expensive than non-Windows alternatives. Hobbyists will probably be more inclined to buy the ARM-based Raspberry Pi, which is just $35, or the $55 BeagleBone Black. Even the Intel-based MinnowBoard, which is compatible with Linux and Android, starts at just $99. CircuitCo also makes both the BeagleBone Black and MinnowBoard.
Sharks Cove might attract a different audience, though. "The primary target usage of the Sharks Cove board is for development of subsystems for Intel Atom based Tablets and Mobile devices, but this development board can be used for any Windows or Android based system which uses the Atom processor," according to the Sharks Cove site.
Microsoft noted that Sharks Cove is a "is a fully functional PC so you can install desktop and Windows Store apps to facilitate your development and testing and even your general enjoyment of the device." The company said it is also interested in bringing Windows to cheaper devices like the $80 Intel Galileo.
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