Thread: Chrome OS
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Capt'n Corrupt's Avatar
Posts: 3,524 | Thanked: 2,958 times | Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant
#209
It seems that NaCL is coming to ARM SoCs!

NaCL is a way of executing native code in the browser in a secure fashion. Up until recently, it was available for x86 processors only, and relied upon a virtualization instruction that wasn't present in current ARM CPUs. However, a kernel tweak, memory sandboxing, and a specific ARM implementation (relying upon the ARMv7-A eXecute Never bit on memory) opens the possibility of secure, full-speed ARM executables in the browser.
http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient...e/arm-overview

This is great timing considering that ARM is about to march into the notebook space, and both ChromeOS, Android, and MeeGo are the most likely candidates to lead the software charge. NaCl should work on all of them.

I'm just waiting for a high-speed java interpreter to make it to NaCl. Dalvik would be a wonderful candidate, extending the ability to have full-speed Java in the browser!

Yes, I am aware of Java applets, but this is a very different implementation that is likely to become mainstream (unlike applets), and offer the freedom to code in any language. It also promises hope to free us from the tyranny of Flash with a 100% OSS solution.

Win.