diff --git a/platforms/cpuinfo.go b/platforms/cpuinfo.go
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b7c23cc19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/platforms/cpuinfo.go
@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+package platforms
+
+import (
+	"bufio"
+	"os"
+	"runtime"
+	"strings"
+
+	"github.com/containerd/containerd/errdefs"
+	"github.com/containerd/containerd/log"
+	"github.com/pkg/errors"
+)
+
+// Present the ARM instruction set architecture, eg: v7, v8
+var cpuVariant string
+
+func init() {
+	if isArmArch(runtime.GOARCH) {
+		cpuVariant = getCPUVariant()
+	} else {
+		cpuVariant = ""
+	}
+}
+
+// For Linux, the kernel has already detected the ABI, ISA and Features.
+// So we don't need to access the ARM registers to detect platform information
+// by ourselves. We can just parse these information from /proc/cpuinfo
+func getCPUInfo(pattern string) (info string, err error) {
+	if !isLinuxOS(runtime.GOOS) {
+		return "", errors.Wrapf(errdefs.ErrNotImplemented, "getCPUInfo for OS %s", runtime.GOOS)
+	}
+
+	cpuinfo, err := os.Open("/proc/cpuinfo")
+	if err != nil {
+		return "", err
+	}
+	defer cpuinfo.Close()
+
+	// Start to Parse the Cpuinfo line by line. For SMP SoC, we parse
+	// the first core is enough.
+	scanner := bufio.NewScanner(cpuinfo)
+	for scanner.Scan() {
+		newline := scanner.Text()
+		list := strings.Split(newline, ":")
+
+		if len(list) > 1 && strings.EqualFold(strings.TrimSpace(list[0]), pattern) {
+			return strings.TrimSpace(list[1]), nil
+		}
+	}
+
+	// Check whether the scanner encountered errors
+	err = scanner.Err()
+	if err != nil {
+		return "", err
+	}
+
+	return "", errors.Wrapf(errdefs.ErrNotFound, "getCPUInfo for pattern: %s", pattern)
+}
+
+func getCPUVariant() string {
+	variant, err := getCPUInfo("Cpu architecture")
+	if err != nil {
+		log.L.WithError(err).Error("failure getting variant")
+		return ""
+	}
+
+	switch variant {
+	case "8":
+		variant = "v8"
+	case "7", "7M", "?(12)", "?(13)", "?(14)", "?(15)", "?(16)", "?(17)":
+		variant = "v7"
+	case "6", "6TEJ":
+		variant = "v6"
+	case "5", "5T", "5TE", "5TEJ":
+		variant = "v5"
+	case "4", "4T":
+		variant = "v4"
+	case "3":
+		variant = "v3"
+	default:
+		variant = "unknown"
+	}
+
+	return variant
+}
diff --git a/platforms/cpuinfo_test.go b/platforms/cpuinfo_test.go
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..95911efe0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/platforms/cpuinfo_test.go
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+package platforms
+
+import (
+	"runtime"
+	"testing"
+)
+
+func TestCPUVariant(t *testing.T) {
+	if !isArmArch(runtime.GOARCH) || !isLinuxOS(runtime.GOOS) {
+		t.Skip("only relevant on linux/arm")
+	}
+
+	variants := []string{"v8", "v7", "v6", "v5", "v4", "v3"}
+
+	p := getCPUVariant()
+	for _, variant := range variants {
+		if p == variant {
+			t.Logf("got valid variant as expected: %#v = %#v\n", p, variant)
+			return
+		}
+	}
+
+	t.Fatalf("could not get valid variant as expected: %v\n", variants)
+}
diff --git a/platforms/database.go b/platforms/database.go
index bd66e2517..362b005a6 100644
--- a/platforms/database.go
+++ b/platforms/database.go
@@ -5,6 +5,13 @@ import (
 	"strings"
 )
 
+// isLinuxOS returns true if the operating system is Linux.
+//
+// The OS value should be normalized before calling this function.
+func isLinuxOS(os string) bool {
+	return os == "linux"
+}
+
 // These function are generated from from https://golang.org/src/go/build/syslist.go.
 //
 // We use switch statements because they are slightly faster than map lookups
@@ -21,6 +28,17 @@ func isKnownOS(os string) bool {
 	return false
 }
 
+// isArmArch returns true if the architecture is ARM.
+//
+// The arch value should be normalized before being passed to this function.
+func isArmArch(arch string) bool {
+	switch arch {
+	case "arm", "arm64":
+		return true
+	}
+	return false
+}
+
 // isKnownArch returns true if we know about the architecture.
 //
 // The arch value should be normalized before being passed to this function.
diff --git a/platforms/defaults.go b/platforms/defaults.go
index 2b57b4979..ed493ab2c 100644
--- a/platforms/defaults.go
+++ b/platforms/defaults.go
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ func DefaultSpec() specs.Platform {
 	return specs.Platform{
 		OS:           runtime.GOOS,
 		Architecture: runtime.GOARCH,
-		// TODO(stevvooe): Need to resolve GOARM for arm hosts.
+		// The Variant field will be empty if arch != ARM.
+		Variant: cpuVariant,
 	}
 }
diff --git a/platforms/defaults_test.go b/platforms/defaults_test.go
index 39f2e485d..db8e88ff3 100644
--- a/platforms/defaults_test.go
+++ b/platforms/defaults_test.go
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ func TestDefault(t *testing.T) {
 	expected := specs.Platform{
 		OS:           runtime.GOOS,
 		Architecture: runtime.GOARCH,
+		Variant:      cpuVariant,
 	}
 	p := DefaultSpec()
 	if !reflect.DeepEqual(p, expected) {