Solaris 10 releases up to and including Solaris 10 8/07 ("S10U4") incorrectly detect newer Intel processors produced since 2007. This problem leads to the 64-bit Solaris kernel crashing (and usually causing a triple fault) almost immediately during startup, in both virtualized and physical environments.
The recommended solution is upgrading to at least Solaris 10 5/08 ("S10U5"). Alternative solutions include forcing Solaris to always boot the 32-bit kernel or applying a patch for bug 6574102 (while Solaris is using the 32-bit kernel).
Solaris 2.6, 7 and 8 releases up to and including Solaris 8 4/01 ("S8U4") incorrectly set up Machine Check Exception (MCE) MSRs on Pentium 4 and somene later Intel CPUs. The problem leads to the Solaris kernel crashing (and usually causing a triple fault) almost immediately during startup, in both virtualized and physical environments. Solaris 9 and later releases are not affected by this problem, and neither is Solaris 2.5.1 and earlier.
The recommended solution is upgrading to at least Solaris 8 7/01 ("S8U5"). Alternative solutions include applying a patch for bugs 4408508 and 4414557 (on an unaffected system).