OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21328/Symbian_Ported_to_Intel_s_Atom_Platform Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:11:05 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com "Ported to Atom" -- wtf?? http://osnews.com/thread?359161 http://osnews.com/thread?359161 Since when is "atom" an ISA? Wouldn't it be more correct to say they ported it to x86? The architecture (ISA) is x86, not "atom", which means if it works on an Atom CPU, it'll work on a Core2 CPU, and an Athlon CPU, etc.

I know it's the register, but still ... Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoenix) Comments RE: "Ported to Atom" -- wtf?? http://osnews.com/thread?359201 http://osnews.com/thread?359201 Presumably it was specifically the Atom, because Atom is the x86 chip most likely to be used in cell phones or MIDs or other places that run Symbian. Sat, 18 Apr 2009 04:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DigitalAxis) Comments gcc http://osnews.com/thread?359203 http://osnews.com/thread?359203 As they say in the comments to the blog, the important step is making symbian compile on gcc. "Atom", x86 etc. are not all that important. Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vivainio) Comments RE[2]: "Ported to Atom" -- wtf?? http://osnews.com/thread?359207 http://osnews.com/thread?359207 Presumably it was specifically the Atom, because Atom is the x86 chip most likely to be used in cell phones or MIDs or other places that run Symbian.

But there isn't anything special about Atom from software development viewpoint: it sports exactly the same instruction set as any other modern x86 chip and as such the same code will run on any of them. As such, they ported Symbian to x86.

Now, however, I have no idea why would anyone want Symbian on x86..It's buggy, insecure, slow..Oh wait, so is Windows, nevermind then! Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WereCatf) Comments RE[3]: "Ported to Atom" -- wtf?? http://osnews.com/thread?359212 http://osnews.com/thread?359212
As such, they ported Symbian to x86.


Not exactly. As the article stated, they compiled Symbian specifically for an Atom reference board. I don't think you'll be able to run this on a non-Atom x86. That's why I specifically said "...ported to Atom platform". Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[4]: "Ported to Atom" -- wtf?? http://osnews.com/thread?359250 http://osnews.com/thread?359250 Probably wouldn't run on a different atom board either, as it really is the drivers that needs to be there to make the whole thing work. SymbianOS has always been compilable for x86, but the question is how much of the insane parts from the (x86) emulator is still left in this port.

They could have run windows and then run the emulator on top of that and play around and got it to work. But that would just be silly. But it can be done:) Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John.Gustafsson) Comments