It may be inefficient in terms of memory and CPU resources, but it was very efficient in terms of dev time and allows for easy modification by third parties. I'm not sure Atom would be where it is now if they went the native route.

When I'm doing development, I spend most of my time interacting with Atom. If I had to buy another pair of 16 GB DIMMs just for the sake of running it, I would. This is what I do professionally and I'm happy to throw a little RAM at something that makes my job more enjoyable and myself more productive.