Hmmm a bit of googling around finds me a 2015 review of the Dell device https://techreport.com/review/27790/dells-venue-8-7000-tablet-reviewed/ containing:
The other important item of note is the x86 instruction set, which differs from the ARM ISA that dominates the mobile world.
Intel and Google have been collaborating on x86 Android optimizations since 2011, so the ISA shouldn’t pose a problem with modern software. Android’s Dalvik VM can generate the appropriate instructions, and binaries compiled with the Native Developer Kit can target x86 specifically. In cases where ARM-specific code is the only option, binary translation software serves as an interpreter. There’s some unavoidable overhead associated with translating ARM instructions to x86, but Intel contends that the impact is minimal. Any potential ISA issues may ultimately be rendered moot by Lollipop, which features a new runtime environment with a cross-platform compiler.
so it does indeed seem to be code translation. Is this pretty standard for x86 Android devices these days, or an unusual exceptional case?
(A bit more research suggests x86-Android is a complete dead end with no new devices in years... so probably not something it's worth worrying about).
