Intel has announced a collaboration agreement with Arduino LLC, creators of the Arduino open-hardware platform, to manufacture and support an Arduino-compatible development board based on Intel's low-power, low-cost Quark chip. The new Galileo board is intended for prototyping and educational purposes.
The move marks a major step by Intel into the market created by open-hardware systems such as Arduino and the popular Raspberry Pi. Intel also recently announced the Minnow board, which comes with the Atom processor. The Quark processor family, which Intel just rolled out this year, is intended for lower-cost deployments that don't require the power of the Atom chip.
According to Intel, the Quark SoC X1000 on the Galileo is a "32-bit, single core, single-thread, Pentium instruction set architecture CPU" that operates at up to 400MHz. The Galileo system also comes with ACPI, PCI Express, 10/100MB Ethernet, RS-232 serial, and USB 2.0 ports.
 
Intel appears to have unleashed a Microsoft-like strategy to win mindshare through donations to educational institutions. The company says it will be "...working with 17 universities across six continents to develop curriculum based on the new Galileo board. The goal of the education effort is to put the power of Intel technology into the hands of as many educators and students as possible."  In addition to this curriculum initiative, Intel will donate 50,000 Galileo boards to 1,000 unviersities over the next 18 months.