Intel, Arduino partner on family of boards for developers, education

Intel and Arduino, an open source hardware maker, will partner to create the Intel Galileo board, a family of Arduino-compatible development tools based on the chip giant's architecture.

The partnership was outlined at the Maker Faire conference in Rome. Arduino makes electronics prototypes for so non-technical users such as artists and designers can build environments and interactive objects like robots.

For Intel, the partnership with Arduino is a move to attract the hobbyist community and embed its architecture in universities. The Intel Galileo will be the first in a line of development boards on the company's architecture.

Arduino already has 19 boards.

The Galileo board features the Intel Quark SoC X1000, a low-power small core product. The Quark is Intel's effort to extend into the Internet of things and wearable devices. The ARM architecture is already hitting those markets due to its low power.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the company will donate 50,000 Galileo boards to 1,000 universities around the world in the next 18 months. The chip giant will also work with 17 universities to develop curriculum based on the Intel Galileo board.

According to Intel, the Galileo board, which will be available at the end of November, can be programmed with Apple's Mac OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows.