Back in June, Google announced Android was destined to gain 64-bit support in the coming L release. A few weeks later, Revision 10 of the Native Development Kit (NDK) was posted with support for the three 64-bit architectures that would be able to run the new version of Android: arm64-v8a, x86_64, and mips64. As we close in on the official release of Android L, Google has updated the NDK to revision 10b and added an emulator image developers can use to prepare their apps to run on devices built with Intel's 64-bit chips.

Intel has been aggressively positioning its architecture for Android developers, having previously released emulator images with Google APIs for KitKat, partnering with game engine developers like Unity, and even footing the bill to give away books for interested developers. With all of this activity, and a number of other signs that Intel and Google are fostering a stronger relationship, we can probably expect to hear quite a bit more about hardware coming out with the Atom / Bay Trail chipsets in the near future.

Keep in mind, the NDK is only for native apps, not those built with Java on the regular Android SDK. If you're a developer, and you have been looking forward to getting your apps running on 64-bit, or if you need to update to the latest version of the NDK, hit the developer portal to get your download started.

Source: Android Developer Portal, Google+