Intel has announced that it will discontinue all of its Quark-series SoCs microcontrollers. Intel’s partners will have to make their final orders for the chips this summer, whereas the company will continue to fulfil Quark orders several years down the road.

Intel’s 32-bit Quark SoCs and microcontrollers are aimed at IoT applications, including wearables, smart home devices, industrial, and other. Intel’s customers will have to make their final Quark orders by July 19, 2019. Meanwhile, the manufacturer will keep shipping its Quarks till July 17, 2022, as makers of the said devices have very long product cycles and need time to develop and replace models use the processors.

Intel Galileo. Image by Adafruit.com

Intel introduced its Quark products in late 2013 along with its Galileo mainboard carrying a Quark microcontroller. Intel also launched its Quark-based Edison microcomputer, the Curie module featuring a Quark SE processor. By now, Intel has discontinued all of its Quark-powered products, including Galileo, Edison, Joule, and Curie. Meanwhile, the latter will still be available to interested parties until June 15, 2020.

Originally meant to power emerging mass market devices, Intel’s Quark SoCs and microcontrollers have barely become popular among makers of actual products. Therefore, it is not surprising that Intel discontinues the lineup without introducing any direct replacements.

The list of Quark products set to be discontinued includes the following SKUs:

  • Intel Quark SoC X1020D
  • Intel Quark SoC X1000
  • Intel Quark SoC X1010
  • Intel Quark SoC X1021D
  • Intel Quark SoC X1001
  • Intel Quark SoC X1011
  • Intel Quark SoC X1020
  • Intel Quark SoC X1021
  • Intel Quark Microcontroller D1000
  • Intel Quark Microcontroller D2000
  • Intel Quark SE C1000 Microcontroller
  • Intel Quark Microcontroller D2000
  • Intel Quark SE C1000 Microcontroller


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Source: Intel

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  • Silma - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link

    Source ?
  • Silma - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link

    Sorry, you can delete this comment and the parent comment.
  • bji - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link

    Ha ha! As if Anandtech would ever curate their comments or even provide a reasonable comment system allowing you to do this yourself.
  • HardwareDufus - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link

    Not related because Microsoft never mentioned support for Quark for it's Windows 10 IoT initiatives. However, I predict we will see a hasty withdraw of Windows IoT Core this year. Almost a year on and we don't even have proper support for the Raspberry Pi 3+, a minor upgrade to the Raspberry Pi 3. Can't trust Microsoft's commitment to anything that doesn't have an 8" screen or bigger.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, January 22, 2019 - link

    Windows IoT Core was really exciting news when it was on its way out the door, but yes, on-going support is lacking to say the least. The RPi is not exactly an uncommon platform and there are even a few commercial vendors putting them to use as thin/remote clients so they're out in sufficient quantities.
  • iwod - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link

    They just don't produce the chip, it is not like they are done with those IP. I think some form of it lives in the current 4G Modem that Apple is using.
  • CiccioB - Wednesday, January 23, 2019 - link

    And at the end this is another branch were Intel has failed to use its x86 architecture.
    No GPU (Larrabee), no HPC (Xeon Phi, recycle of the previous failure), no smartphone, being replaced also in other embedded devices like NAS, it becomes clear (also for those that have not understood this u to now) that anything else that is not desktop/server and has a high end OS on it doesn't fit x86 requirements as there are many other better solutions.

    The question is, how long it will take for these other solutions (that are expanding in use and investments) to corrode its main core business. The (slow) process has already started. We'll see when it will become an issue for Intel.

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