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Intel Slashes Computer Startup Times
An anonymous reader writes "At Intel's Developer Forum in Taiwan, Intel introduced a new Non-volatile caching technology called 'Robson'." The new Robson cache technology allows computers to start up almost immediately and load programs much faster. Intel declined to comment on the specifics of how the technology works only saying that 'More information will be revealed later'.
Hmm... I hope this doesnt require big changes to computer architecture...
The real reason more informatin will be revealed later is that their computers are still booting up!
This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
So are we going to all be expected to hibernate our Robson's now?
Why does this sound like a CowboyNeal joke to me?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I hope this is real and not vapor-ware. I've been waiting for instant start for 20 years.
Would we get a Robson Crusoe?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
FTFA: "It's up to the [equipment manufacturers] to decide how it will be implemented. My guess is that enterprise users will likely see it first," [Mooly Eden, VP and GM of Intel's mobile platform group] said.
S.Jobs: "Oh, yeah?"
you're booting too often
God Fucking Damnit
Stuff that will be revealed at a later date, if market conditions warrant its release.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
The laptop with Robson also opened Adobe Reader in 0.4 seconds, while the other notebook required 5.4 seconds.
Presumably, the other notebook was running Intel's next generation CPU with sixteen cores.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
While cute, that's not entirely accurate. A well-maintained WinXP installation with antivirus installed still boots in the 30 second range on a P4 with a decent amount of RAM. It's the extra stuff that can really slow it down. (OpenOffice or MS Office, taskbar goodies, etc.)
Just like a really good Gentoo installation can boot up very quickly, but it can take awhile to go through the process if it isn't so well-optimized. Out-of-the-box on a dual boot P4, it's been my experience that WinXP boots faster than out-of-the-box Linux. (But I'm not enough of a linux guru to trim it down.) -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
This doesnt seem to be about start up times at all (except from Hibernation). All it is, is a large HDD cache. This will do nothing to make PCs "Start up" Faster. It only has affect in the Article [aparrently] because the "slower" laptop had put its HDD to sleep.
I think PC Hardware and Software manufacturers really do need to work on the glacial boot times that PCs have. Unfortunately, this is only a solution to some of the minor problems, and not the main ones.
Move along... there is no sig here.
Linux User: Boo...ting? Oh...that thing I had to do when I first plugged it in. Gotcha.
At any rate, the theory behind instant startup isn't too hard, it's just an engineering implementation.
All you do is make it so that, following shutdown procedures, the computer immediately switches to startup, except keeping track of the fact it was "shut down," not "restarted." When it finishes restarting, it writes the startup RAM state to disk, then turns itself off.
Upon being turned on, the computer just writes the stored RAM state back from the disk to RAM, and presto! It's just like starting up the computer, except really fast. At least, that was the theory. I've been sort of surprised not to see this implemented, it seems like everyone would like to see fast startups, but hardly anyone cares how long it takes to shut down (especially with soft power)- you're done with he computer anyway. I've heard that a lot of work goes into decreasing boot times for Windows and OSX. It seems like a lot less work to implement an "instant startup" plan, and then not have to care much if startup takes forever, than to carefully track, fiddle with, and optimize everything that happens during startup.
Of course, with this system, restarting after a crash would not be instant, it would take just as long as ever. So it might work to greater advantage on some operating systems than others, depending on why you usually restart.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
From TFA:
"Chipmaker demonstrates 'Robson' flash memory to boost laptop startup speeds."
Mystery solved.
This isn't a load time problem. It's a load crap problem.
"Loading and verifying WebBuy.api" (does anyone ever use WebBuy, Adobe's DRM system for PDF documents?)
"Checking for updates" (Adobe might have changed the format of PDF again.)
Loading ad content for toolbar. (Sigh.)
And then all the crap that's being downloaded has to be scanned for viruses. It's all that junk that's the problem.
Of course, OpenOffice isn't all that great on launch time either. And no, loading it at boot time isn't the answer.
Just think of the performance increase from putting the page file into RAM!
(The message to be displayed when the cache gets corrupt...)
*dodges tomatoes*
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Both computers are running a similar load of software at boot. The PC boots with Palm Desktop, Rainlender, and a web server (Abyss) while the Mac boots with Quicksilver and a web server (Apache). Other than that, everything else is pretty standard--audio drivers, video drivers, tablet drivers, and so on. Most of these things are present on both computers. The Mac is a month or two old, the PC hasn't been formatted in two years or so.
Everything timed at home with a stopwatch.
First up--the amount of time it takes from pushing the power button until you have a usable login screen.
Mac--139 seconds
PC--38 seconds
Next--the amount of time it takes from entering your password until you have an idle workspace (on Windows, this was when things stopped loading in the system tray, on OSX this was when the Finder menu appeared completely).
Mac--50 seconds
PC--9 seconds
So, complete boot time (plus whatever time it takes to enter a username and/or password)...
Mac--189 seconds
PC--47 seconds
Finally--the amount of time from the time you click "shutdown" until your computer is powered off.
Mac--53 seconds
PC--11 seconds
So, the time it takes to do a complete reboot...
Mac--242 seconds
PC--58 seconds
Instant-on would be fantastic if it could recover from crashes. There's nothing more frustrating than waiting three minutes for my laptop to boot.
You complain about the zoom extending. Uhu, have you looked at compact multi-element zoom designs? 12 or more elements, many or even most of which geared independantly is not uncommon. The longer the zoom - comsumer guys want optical 10 times zooms, which would be unheard of in a professional lens for many other considerations (predominantly aperture speed and distortion characteristics) and that means even more complicated designs, even allowing small lenses are easier and simpler to design. Now try shifting all those elements _accurately_ with a tiny low voltage low torque servo (see why it's low torque here - too fe2w turns possible in such a small space to get a focus throw long enough to try to do this quickly and accurately and repeatably*). This is why my piezo-wave-effect ring-motor driven Nikkor zoom is several times more expensive of itself than almost any digicam.
Got the idea?
To the above poster - i sure hope there's not much calibration going on when i boot my Nikon. Unless it's to compensate for working temperature effects, if i've spent time and effort having a lens tuned to how i like it (yes this doesn't just happen, it's common) i want it to be left alone at that spec. Now that even modest digicams such as the Fuji F10/11 boot instantly and respond extremely quickly, there's simply no excuse for slow electronics and (electronic) shutter save at the real budget segment.
* even some (sadly many) professional photogs insist on continuing the myth that because the lens / sensor is small, everything remains sharp because the DOF (depth of field) is greater in those conditions. Er, DOF is a psychological effect which is a function of the print enlargement factor, print size, viewing distance and airy dic resolving limit - so the assumption is not true at equivalent apertures, hence the need even in very small "format" cameras to _still_ focus accurately, in OP's case, sadly, slowly too. The effect observed is anecdotally true however at small print sizes like 6" by 4".