Qualcomm Technologies Inc. today announced plans to acquire Arduino S.r.l., an Italian company that develops open-source single-board computers.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Arduino’s computers are implemented on a single circuit board and cost under $100. They’re mainly designed to power connected devices. An agricultural engineer, for example, could use an Arduino board to power a robot that monitors crop yields.

The company sells devices called shields that can be attached to its computers to extend their capabilities. One of Arduino’s shields includes a GPS system, while another contains a suite of temperature and pressure sensors. The company also sells other accessories such as cables.

Arduino debuted its newest product, a single-board computer called the Uno Q, in conjunction with today’s acquisition announcement. As the name implies, it’s based on Qualcomm silicon. There’s also a microcontroller from publicly traded chipmaker STMicroelectronics NV. 

A microcontroller is a compact, low-power processor with a simpler design than a central processing unit. The one in the Uno Q is designed to power the connected devices to which users attach the computer. It can, for example, ingest data from industrial sensors.

The bulk of the Uno Q’s computing capacity is provided by a Dragonwing QRB2210 chip from Qualcomm. It features a quad-core CPU based on an Arm Holdings plc design. There’s also a graphics processing unit and two image signal processors.

The Uno Q ships with a copy of Debian, a popular Linux distribution. The operating system enables the device to run local applications. A user could, for example, install a program that analyzes footage from the sensors attached to the Uno Q.

Developers can write software for the device using a new coding tool called Arduino App Lab that debuted today. One of its flagship features is an integration with Edge Impulse, an artificial intelligence development platform that Qualcomm acquired earlier this year. The platform makes it possible to train lightweight AI models capable of running on the Uno Q.

Qualcomm plans to provide Arduino customers with broader access to its technology following the acquisition. At the same time, the computer maker will continue to provide support for products from other chipmakers. 

The company added that “Arduino will preserve its open approach.” Today it made the Uno Q’s blueprints available under an open-source license. “By combining their open-source ethos with Qualcomm Technologies’ portfolio of leading edge products and technologies, we’re helping enable millions of developers to create intelligent solutions faster and more efficiently,” said Nakul Duggal, group general manager of Qualcomm’s automotive, industrial and embedded IoT unit.

Photo: Arduino