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Embedded Linux Achieves One-Second Boot Time
Sam writes "A new goalpost has been set in the race for faster bootup times. MontaVista Software announced (and demonstrated at the Virtual Freescale Technology Forum) a dashboard application going from cold boot to operational in one second flat on their embedded Linux platform. Although this is unlikely to immediately benefit your average Linux user, previous real-time patches have eventually made their way into the main kernel."
Impressive and would be a huge improvement over the current state of things.
But then again, my 1Mhz Apple ][ could cold boot in just a couple seconds.Of course, loading Applesoft Basic from tape took an additional two minutes but Integer Basic was in the ROM.
Michael Abrash wrote a great article about this in Dr. Dobbs magazine in the 90s. His young daughter (5 years old?) asked him why he never used his "fast" computer. Abrash was using a state-of-the-art 266mhz DX2 powerhouse and couldn't figure out what she meant. She was referring to the old Vic-20 in the corner that would boot in just a few seconds. Windows 3.0 took several minutes to load. IIRC, the article was titled "perception is everything"
Okay, I haven't been using desktop Linux on a day to day basis since around 2003; but even then, sleeping and hibernating worked reasonably well - so I didn't reboot all that often. On my Mac, the only time I reboot is when an update forces me to. So (serious question) why is faster boot times all that important? I wouldn't think devices w/ embedded Linux would shut down regularly, but maybe I'm wrong...
#DeleteChrome
How many of those 600 million cycles are performing operations as opposed to waiting for IO and memory access?
How many operations does it take to boot Linux?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.