Intel Quark
Intel's tiny x86 SoC for wearables and embedded systems.
Intel Quark is a family of 32-bit x86 system-on-chips and microcontrollers from Intel, built for minimal size and low power draw, with wearable devices among its target markets. It debuted at the Intel Developer Forum in 2013 and was discontinued in January 2019. Compared to Intel’s Atom processors, Quark chips are slower but significantly smaller and more energy-efficient. They omit SIMD instruction sets like MMX and SSE and are designed to run embedded operating systems.
The Quark line powered the now-discontinued Intel Galileo developer board, and in 2016 Arduino released the Arduino 101 board featuring a Quark SoC. For most models, the CPU instruction set matches that of a Pentium P54C/i586 processor.
The first Quark product, the X1000, is a single-core chip built on a 32 nm process, clocked up to 400 MHz. It includes interfaces such as PCI Express, UART, I²C, Fast Ethernet, USB 2.0, SDIO, a power management controller, and GPIO, along with 512 kB of on-chip SRAM and an integrated DDR3 memory controller.
In January 2014, Intel introduced the Edison microcomputer, which uses a Quark core and has a form factor roughly the size of an SD card, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities. The following January, Intel announced the Curie module, a button-sized unit for wearables based on a Quark SE core with 80 kB SRAM and 384 kB flash, plus a 6-axis accelerometer, a DSP sensor hub, Bluetooth LE, and a battery charge controller.
Intel ended Quark production in January 2019, accepting orders until July 2019 and making final shipments by July 2022.
The Quark processor core is referred to as Lakemont in several models. The Clanton models support the i586 instruction set with an x87 FPU and NX bit, with temperature ranges of -40 °C to +85 °C for X10x1 variants and 0 °C to +70 °C for X10x0 variants. Secure boot is available on X102x models. They include a single 16-bit DDR3 controller, two PCI Express 2.0 controllers with one lane each, a USB controller with two host and one device port, two 10/100 Mbit Ethernet controllers, an integrated memory card reader supporting SDIO 3.0, eMMC 4.41, and SD 3.0, and serial I/O for SPI, UART, and I²C.
The Silver Butte model implements only a limited subset of the 32-bit x86 instruction set, omitting features like segmentation, BCD and string instructions, AF/PF flags, and XCHG.
- Introduced
- 2013
- Discontinued
- January 2019
- Process node
- 32 nm
- Max clock rate
- 400 MHz
- Instruction set
- i586 (Pentium/P54C) for most models
- On-chip sram
- 512 kB (X1000)
- Temperature range
- -40 °C to +85 °C (X10x1 models); 0 °C to +70 °C (X10x0 models)
Lore & Background
The first product in the Quark line is the single-core 32 nm X1000 SoC with a clock rate of up to 400 MHz. The system includes several interfaces, including PCI Express, serial UART, I²C, Fast Ethernet, USB 2.0, SDIO, power management controller, and GPIO. There are 512 kB of on-chip embedded SRAM and an integrated DDR3 memory controller. A second Intel product that includes Quark core, the Intel Edison microcomputer, was presented in January 2014. It has a form factor close to the size of an SD card, and is capable of wireless networking using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. In January 2015, Intel announced the sub-miniature Intel Curie module for wearable applications, based on a Quark SE core with 80 kB SRAM and 384 kB flash. At the size of a button, it also features a 6-axis accelerometer, a DSP sensor hub, a Bluetooth LE unit and a battery charge controller.
Reader's Guide
Intel Quark was notable for bringing x86 architecture to ultra-low-power, small-form-factor devices, competing with ARM-based microcontrollers in the emerging wearable and Internet of Things markets. The line powered the Intel Galileo developer board and the Arduino 101 board, making x86 accessible to hobbyists and educators. However, the Quark X1000 contained a segfault bug (#71538) that under specific circumstances caused crashes; the workaround involved omitting LOCK prefixes, which was feasible for single-threaded embedded systems but problematic for general-purpose Linux distributions and multithreaded binaries. Intel announced the end-of-life of its Quark products in January 2019, with orders accepted until July 2019 and final shipments set for July 2022. The line's discontinuation marked Intel's exit from the low-power microcontroller space, though its legacy includes demonstrating that x86 could be shrunk to button-sized modules like the Curie.
Did You Know?
- The Intel Curie module, based on a Quark SE core, is the size of a button and includes a 6-axis accelerometer and Bluetooth LE.
- Quark processors lack support for SIMD instruction sets such as MMX and SSE.
- The Quark X1000 contains a segfault bug (#71538) that can be worked around by omitting LOCK prefixes in compiled code.
More in Intel and AMD Microprocessors, Part 2 1-24
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced