QuickLogic, SparkFun and Crowd Supply Launch the SparkFun Thing Plus - QuickLogic EOS S3 Development Kit

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- QuickLogic Corporation QUIK, a developer of ultra-low power multi-core voice-enabled SoCs, embedded FPGA IP, and endpoint AI solutions, today announced that it is co-launching the new SparkFun Thing Plus – QuickLogic EOS S3 development kit, featuring a small form factor board with a QuickLogic EOS™ S3 SoC with Crowd Supply and SparkFun Electronics. This new dev kit includes the Qwiic Connect System enabling users to easily complement the embedded FPGA and MCU on the EOS S3 SoC with a multitude of additional development functionality.  It's also fully supported by open source development tools, making the kit highly accessible to everyone from students to consultants to engineers at the world's largest corporations. 

The SparkFun Thing Plus – QuickLogic EOS S3 development kit incorporates the EOS S3 SoC, which includes QuickLogic's embedded FPGA (eFPGA) technology with 2,400 effective logic cells and 64 KB of RAM along with an embedded Arm® Cortex®-M4F MCU running at up to 80 MHz and providing 512 KB of RAM. The eFPGA technology can implement custom IP, accelerate or offload functions from the MCU, or provide glue logic. The Arm Cortex-M4F can implement functions generally best suited to software. This extreme hardware and software flexibility makes the kit a perfect development platform for a wide range of applications, including adding voice or AI/ML processing to edge IoT devices. A further benefit of combining embedded FPGA and MCU functionality on the same SoC is that the EOS S3 consumes very little power – making it suitable for remote and battery-powered applications.

SparkFun's Thing Plus – QuickLogic EOS S3 form factor and integrated Qwiic Connect System enables developers to easily add other design building blocks to the Thing Plus - EOS S3 dev kit, including over 150 development boards, sensors, LCDs, relays and more, without the need for soldering. Once the boards begin shipping at the end of May, SparkFun will release its standard suite of documentation, including sample code, design files, and tutorials for getting started. The kit is supported by 100% open source software tools such as FreeRTOS, Zephyr, nMigen, Docker and SymbiFlow, and includes out-of-the-box support for AI tools, including the SensiML™ Analytics Toolkit and TensorFlow Lite. The development kit will be sold and distributed through the online site, Crowd Supply, further increasing its accessibility.

"The SparkFun Thing Plus – QuickLogic EOS S3 development kit represents another step forward toward realizing the vision of a completely open source development environment as defined by our QORC initiative," said Brian Faith, QuickLogic's CEO. "This tiny board represents a super flexible open source development platform, which makes our technology available to everyone."

"QuickLogic's EOS S3 SoC is perfect fit for our Thing Plus series of development boards," said Kirk Benell, SparkFun's CTO. "It gives users an ultra-low power but highly integrated hardware and software solution in a tiny package. The fact that it's fully supported by an open source development environment is completely aligned with our company philosophy of accelerating innovation with open source hardware and software."

"The combination of QuickLogic's embedded FPGA technology with SparkFun's Thing Plus and Qwiic ecosystems makes for a powerful platform to quickly build embedded and wearable machine learning and sensor fusion applications," said Josh Lifton, co-founder and president of Crowd Supply. "We're thrilled to work with both companies to further the state of open source hardware."

Availability
The SparkFun Thing Plus – QuickLogic EOS S3 development kit has launched exclusively on Crowd Supply. For more information, visit www.quicklogic.com/products/eos-s3/sparkfun-thing-plus.

About SparkFun Electronics (www.sparkfun.com)

Since 2003, SparkFun has been helping turn ideas into reality – whether you're creating a smart weather station, exploring the frontier of machine learning, or prototyping your first (or tenth) product. No matter your vision, our open source tools, documentation, and online tutorials make emerging technology easy to use, and the road to a finished project shorter.

About QuickLogic

QuickLogic Corporation QUIK is a fabless semiconductor company that develops low power, multi-core semiconductor platforms and Intellectual Property (IP) for Artificial Intelligence (AI), voice and sensor processing. The solutions include embedded FPGA IP (eFPGA) for hardware acceleration and pre-processing, and heterogeneous multi-core SoCs that integrate eFPGA with other processors and peripherals. The Analytics Toolkit from our recently acquired wholly-owned subsidiary, SensiML Corporation, completes the end-to-end solution with accurate sensor algorithms using AI technology. The full range of platforms, software tools and eFPGA IP enables the practical and efficient adoption of AI, voice, and sensor processing across mobile, wearable, hearable, consumer, industrial, edge and endpoint IoT. For more information, visit www.quicklogic.com and https://www.quicklogic.com/blog/.

About Crowd Supply

Crowd Supply is the only product development platform offering engineers and companies a full suite of services to successfully launch their innovative products, including marketing, fulfilment, crowdfunding, and ongoing sales through distributors. The creator-focused platform connects backers with exciting projects that address a market need, allowing developers to quickly validate their ideas and transform interest from early adopters into manufactured products. With a commitment to user rights and a laser focus on successful delivery, Crowd Supply is the future of product development. For more information, visit www.crowdsupply.com.

QuickLogic and logo are registered trademarks and EOS and SensiML are trademarks of QuickLogic. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

SOURCE QuickLogic Corporation