Symbian ^1 running on Intel Atom as proof of concept

Symbian^1 is running on x86 since many years. Anybody who does more than trivial programming for Symbian uses the emulator which is part of the SDK and which from a technical point of view is nothing else than Symbian compiled for and running on x86, with a set of special drivers to let it use part of a Windows harddisk as its "disk" and a Windows window as its output device.

This has confused a great many new hopeful Symbian programmers who tried to install binaries compiled for the emulator (x86 code) on the phone (which expects ARM code, of course) and were surprised that the installer complained.

The Symbian emulator was (and still is) somewhat unique in this, I think. Other systems like Windows Mobile or Android work with an ARM CPU emulator and run more or less the same code as in the phone on top of that for their phone emulators.

So, if Symbian shows now something on the Atom, this is more a political statement than a really new technical achievement.

"Those with long memories will recall the joint Symbian, Nokia, Intel reference design from 2004, which was based on the Xscale platform. However no devices running on this platform were released to the market."

I have a long memory, and a more accurate one. 😉 Intel's Xscale used to be known StrongARM when Intel acquired the IPR and related manufacturing capability from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). Nowadays Xscale is owned by Marvel, not Intel, and called something else. Point is: Xscale = ARM core.

Other point: Symbian OS has been running on x86 for many years already (long before Symbian^1), but not used in any actual products by any manufacturer (mainly used for development purposes).

Would running Symbian on an Atom give advantages over Windows or Linux in terms of battery life? I'm disappointed with the power consumption on my Atom-based EeePC, but I don't know if this is due to the hardware or OS. What would be really good would be a netbook with battery life comparable to the old Series 7 (routinely 8-9 hours).

rbrunner wrote:Symbian^1 is running on x86 since many years. Anybody who does more than trivial programming for Symbian uses the emulator which is part of the SDK and which from a technical point of view is nothing else than Symbian compiled for and running on x86, with a set of special drivers to let it use part of a Windows harddisk as its "disk" and a Windows window as its output device.

This has confused a great many new hopeful Symbian programmers who tried to install binaries compiled for the emulator (x86 code) on the phone (which expects ARM code, of course) and were surprised that the installer complained.

The Symbian emulator was (and still is) somewhat unique in this, I think. Other systems like Windows Mobile or Android work with an ARM CPU emulator and run more or less the same code as in the phone on top of that for their phone emulators.

So, if Symbian shows now something on the Atom, this is more a political statement than a really new technical achievement.

I don't think you understand what has actually been achieved by this.

The Symbian kernel has been ported to run directly on the x86 hardware, utilizing all of the hardware and interfaces. The emulator is simply the kernel implemented as a windows program. Executables created for the emulator can actually be run on their own and will open the emulator.

neilhoskins wrote:Would running Symbian on an Atom give advantages over Windows or Linux in terms of battery life? I'm disappointed with the power consumption on my Atom-based EeePC, but I don't know if this is due to the hardware or OS. What would be really good would be a netbook with battery life comparable to the old Series 7 (routinely 8-9 hours).

The main problem with the netbooks and other devices with atom hardware is the supporting chip-sets used in the devices. Atom processors use something like 2 watts (I think). The supporting hardware uses around the same amount of power if not more which means the effectiveness of the low power processor is almost wasted. This means no matter what OS is run, the battery life will never be up to the level of the ARM processors. The ARM processors (like in the Series 7) have 'system-on-chip' processors where everything is contained in a single chip and still incredibly low power.

Another thing the x86 processors lack is a proper standby state. ARM processors can effectively use no power when the processor isn't being used, whereas x86 processors don't have an instruction to do this.

I think the way to look at this is that x86+GPU is at the top end much quicker than ARM+MBX.

This allows a new class of resource-hungry apps to exist, or more probably, existing apps to scale up eg. video editing on phone => full video suite.

Question is really whether Symbian can tout it's strengths well enough (voice integration, realtime OS, low resource usage, relatively good security, chance for the phone networks to get into branded netbooks) to make any headway.

@mikezs: Thanks for that; it answers my question perfectly. I, for one, then, will be holding out for an ARM-based netbook, because I don't believe the Atom gives any significant advantages over other more normal laptops. It's like when I used to ride motorbikes and laugh at people talking about one car being marginally quicker than another car, when both were dog-slow compared to a bike.

N/A wrote:"Those with long memories will recall the joint Symbian, Nokia, Intel reference design from 2004, which was based on the Xscale platform. However no devices running on this platform were released to the market."

I have a long memory, and a more accurate one. 😉 Intel's Xscale used to be known StrongARM when Intel acquired the IPR and related manufacturing capability from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). Nowadays Xscale is owned by Marvel, not Intel, and called something else. Point is: Xscale = ARM core.

Other point: Symbian OS has been running on x86 for many years already (long before Symbian^1), but not used in any actual products by any manufacturer (mainly used for development purposes).

Heh. Thanks for the correction n/a. Feeling suitably embarrassed now. I should have checked that more carefully. I remember an announcement about the port to x86, but not much more than that.

As always I'm grateful to commentators for adding extra light on this with the debate ARM vs x86. In mobile devices it seems ARM has the advantages, especially with the possibilities that SMP has to make up performance differences. Still x86 is widely used in non mobile stuff so. And yes the post was more of an excuse to talk about Symbian OS potential on not mobile phone devices (which if the Foundation can propagate could be very interesting).

mikezs wrote:I don't think you understand what has actually been achieved by this.

The Symbian kernel has been ported to run directly on the x86 hardware, utilizing all of the hardware and interfaces. The emulator is simply the kernel implemented as a windows program.

I see what you mean. From the point of view of possibilities, Symbian as a stand-alone OS managing the whole PC is certainly something else entirely than the emulator which can do nothing without the help of Windows.

But I was speaking regarding technical achievement. And there really is *nothing* simple to "implement the kernel as a Windows program". If you can do that, you have already travelled an estimated 3/4th of the way towards a full port.

In fact, certain aspects must have been *more* challenging to get them running: The emulator must turn each Symbian process, as it would run in an OS with full control over the CPU, into a mere thread. There can't be many Windows programs around that use threads in such an extreme way, which is quite an achievement in its own right.