Many makers found the 400 MHz processor a bit slow for their projects, mostly because of Arduino being emulated with Linux. Intel addressed the community issues, made some changes to the original board, and presented a new one named Galileo Gen 2.

Galileo Gen 2 is still powered by the same processor, but its performance has been considerably increased. The Arduino shields compatibility has also been improved with 12 GPIOs, now made fully native by being connected directly to the Quark X1000 SoC, and 12-bit PWM resolution allowing faster and smoother responses.

This board is a bit bigger than the original one, and the 3.5 mm serial port jack has been replaced by a six-pin 3.3 V USB TTL UART header, now making it compatible with the standard FTDI to USB serial cable. Also, the USB host port was replaced with a full size Type A receptacle 2.0 USB port.

The power regulation system has been changed to accept power supplies from 7 V to 15 V. The power supply jack isn't the only powering option available; it is now possible to power this board through the Ethernet cable by connecting it to a Power over Ethernet (PoE)-enabled Ethernet switch. It is also possible to power it from a connected shield, as long as the input voltage applied to the Galileo's VIN pin is in the 7 V – 15 V range:

Intel Galileo Gen 2 board

For the demos in this book, you can either use Galileo or Galileo Gen 2. The projects will run on both.