There have been low end x86s available for many years, eg the Vortex SoCs. They are still around, the company even put out an Arduino compatible board recently:

There have been low end x86s available for many years, eg the Vortex SoCs. They are still around, the company even put out an Arduino compatible board recently: http://linuxgizmos.com/arduino-compatible-boardset-runs-linux-on-x86/ http://linuxgizmos.com/arduino-compatible-boardset-runs-linu...