Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1-5.
Intel's Quark SoC X1000 is the processor at the heart of the In-
tel Galileo.
The
firmware
that runs on the Galileo is much more advanced than what's
on an Arduino Uno. On an Uno and most other Arduino devices, there is firm-
ware on the board called the
bootloader
which is meant to help you upload
and run your code on the board's processor. It only does that and not much
else. The firmware on the Galileo, on the other hand, is much more advanced.
Not only does it help you upload and run your code on the board, but it also
keeps track of files, the date and time of day, and helps share the board's
various resources between multiple programs running at the same time. In
that way, it's more like a typical computer.
In fact, the firmware on the Galileo is a version of
Linux
, the free operating
system that powers many desktop computers and servers these days. Gal-
ileo may not have a screen or desktop environment, but it still has much of
the functionality that an operating system affords. And through your Arduino
code, you'll be able to access this functionality, giving you much more capa-
bilities than you'd have with a typical Arduino. For instance, if you want your
project to take a picture from a web cam and email it, it's something that
would be difficult to do with only Arduino code. But with the power of Linux,
this could be done more easily.
