One of Intel’s biggest supporters, Kontron, has decided to adopt the ARM architecture for its embedded system platforms. Kontron is one of the leaders for embedded computers, and had been a strong supporter of Intel for most of its existence. While the company isn’t getting away from the Intel platform, they are adding the ARM architecture to their mix of products, which says a lot, to me at least.

Generally, a player like Kontron goes where the customer tells them to go. If there was no demand for ARM from its customers, it’s unlikely Kontron would have made such a move. Note that you can’t adopt a completely new architecture overnight. It requires lots of planning and R&D (or an acquisition, which isn’t the case here).

It’s no secret that ARM has made huge strides over the last few years, in terms of performance and adoption. What started as a processor for mobile handsets has morphed into an architecture that scales from the very low end to fairly mid performance, with good power specs.

It’s no surprise that Kontron made this announcement, and they said that products using the ARM architecture will be announced before the end of the year. An official announcement about the adoption should be coming in the next few weeks.