Intel's answer to the popular $25 Raspberry Pi credit-card sized PC, the Galileo Gen2, is set to be available in August for around $60.

Like the Pi, the Galileo Gen2 computer is an uncased board with all the components necessary to build a PC. Only external peripherals need to be attached. Galileo is targeted at the community of do-it-yourselfers and enthusiasts who make robots, small electronics, wearable devices and even PCs.

The Gen2 succeeds the first Galileo computer, which started shipping late last year for around $70. The new Galileo has a low-power x86 processor called Quark, while the Raspberry Pi has an ARMv7 processor.

Intel is trying to make its way into the wearables and robotics market, and is using Galileo as a way to explore opportunities for the Quark chip. The chip maker is pinning its hope on the maker community to come up with ideas.

At $60, the board is more expensive than ARM-based alternatives like Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone, which starts at $50. But with 100-megabit Ethernet and 256MB of DDR3 memory, Galileo offers more features for its price compared to the ARM options.

Computerworld