Arduino is known for microcontrollers, especially in real-time applications and control applications. Our ecosystem highlighted some very precise needs that would benefit from a slightly different approach, that takes the best of what’s available in the microcontroller and microprocessor worlds and combines them to provide real time control and intelligence.
For example, the Portenta X8 combines a dual core STMicroelectronics H7 Dual ARM Cortex M7/M4 and ARM Cortex M4  microcontroller and a Quad-core  NXP i.MX 8M Mini ARM Cortex -A53 core and ARM Cortex -M4 core microprocessor. The two parts of the device can talk to each other through a multi communication mechanism, thus allowing the user to take advantage of both.
This enables people to develop applications that deal with the most sophisticated aspects of the cloud whilst also keeping the real-time aspect. This is particularly important in the enterprise where there is a high level of knowledge in developing Linux applications, especially as containers, whilst on the other side there is also a need for deterministic and fast control. Robotics, AGV, multiprotocol gateways, and smart kiosks are among the target applications.
The latest devices are designed having a production and industrial production use case in mind. This means the microprocessor and all the components on the board have a higher temperature range to deal with the harsh environments. Combined with the security aspect (the Portenta X8 is PSA certification by Arm) these features put the Arduino Pro range into a different class of devices for industrial usage. They are products that can easily be put into a machine or as a product to retrofit a process and send data to the cloud without having to also install additional heaters and/or cooling devices.