System News for Sun Users - The Blog

Two important Atom features, which optimize drivers and other software to run Intel’s smallest and lowest power processor, have been put back into OpenSolaris: Performance counters and support for the MOVEB instruction.

“…if Atom is successful at being used in embedded applications, it seems natural to enable Solaris to run on it,” writes Intel’s David Stewart. “And further, there is absolutely nothing about the Solaris footprint to prevent it from fitting on a pretty dang small device.”

The 45nm Intel Atom processors contain 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm. It is designed for the latest Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and another new category of devices for the Internet called netbooks and nettops.

Stewart concludes with an interesting thought: Who will be the first to build an Atom-based Solaris or OpenSolaris embedded device?

Find out more about OpenSolaris support for the ASUS EeePC product line by visiting the discussion and/or a blog dedicated to using OpenSolaris on EeePC.