Atmel, SparkFun, and other vendors are also developing inexpensive developer boards, so Chipzilla is following suit to make sure they don’t miss out. Developer boards are mostly ARM-based, but the $15 board could provide Intel a breakthrough.

The new developer board has the Quark D2000 microcontroller, which operates at 32MHz, the same frequency as the Quark chip on the button-sized Curie board. It might seem slow but it is faster than the second generation PCs and you could do rather a lot with them.

The Intel board has a six-axis accelerometer, a magnetometer with a temperature sensor, and one USB 2.0 port. It also has a coin cell battery slot and a 5-volt power input.

The kit is designed for the Internet of Things, which means that Intel hopes it will be used to develop gadgets, wearables, home automation products, industrial equipment and other Internet of Things products.

Developers could also use the computer to hook up sensors for temperature, light, sound, weather and distance to devices.
The board is cheap but nothing like the “high-powered” Raspberry Pi 3, which can double as a PC. The Intel board is smaller, consumes much less power and has a much slower CPU.