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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."
I can post before I log in.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I'm surprised that this is news. I remember working a few years ago on booting Linux (also the MontaVista version) in 600 million cycles flat, which for a CPU running at 600 MHz, is exactly one second as well.
You can even still: watch a video of this here
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
A computer sitting idle needlessly consumes power. A computer switched off doesn't.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
CoreBoot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) will boot a full Linux kernel on a general-purpose machine in 3 seconds. Ok, it's two seconds longer, but it ain't bad.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'll bite.
Some of us want to run laptops, netbooks and other devices where the ability to shut down completely and then turn on quickly, using zero battery in the meantime would be very useful.
No sig for the moment.
It isn't the black itself that gets to them it is the black on white action.
Give me a call when they can go from off to Google in less than 1 second. (OS boot, wireless initialization, browser start, google reply). Shoot, I would be impressed with 10 seconds.
They just want to simulate the effect of printing marketing materials on a worn-out laser printer in need of toner because that looks sooooo professional.
Nothing says we're professionals and have important information for you like a crooked illegible photocopy except perhaps a grade-school spirit duplicator. Expect funky light purple text next. The holy grail, of course, will be a wrinkled paper background that actually makes it look like they dug the web page back out of the trash and gave it to you.
The video was hard to find on the given links. One of them even had the audacity to ask me to log in to view it. Yeah, as if.
One Second Linux Boot Demonstration (new version)
Also, kudos on the music choice. The wah-wah pedal in the opening music really gives the tech demo that "porn soundtrack" feel I know you were going for.
coding is life
No, it's a 200% increase.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yeah, but you know you're really cool when you have no idea how long it takes to boot your machine. After all, you only do it once. ;-)
It's 300% of the old boottime, which is a 200% increase.
you don't even link to the best page in the universe?
I'm working as an embedded driver software engineer and setup our company's OpenEmbedded build system to provide an end-to-end build environment for our embedded offering and while I can't find the link at the moment -- the one second boot time has been done before and was posted on TI's OMAP developer site a while ago. If I remember correctly it's mostly about U-Boot and how it copies the kernel into memory (byte by byte as opposed to streaming it) which is where you get the majority of your time decrease.
Either way, MontaVista is not the first on this one and it's a shame they're pretending they are.
The one second boot time is also never going to benefit regular PCs as they achieve it due to the nature of embedded systems -- you build a distro for your specific hardware which means no probing, none of that BIOS junk. No looking for the 'first' boot device.. U-Boot can be configured to automatically jump to the booting phase so you're already faster there. Beyond that, load and decompress your kernel (it'd be faster if your kernel wasn't compressed too wouldn't it?)..
So, chalk this up to having a kernel built specifically for your hardware and a boot-loader that is set to only boot one way, ever.
Found it.
Originally posted by 'Mohanky' June 2008:
http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php/All_This_For_1_Second_Boot
What are you talking about? On my monitor his site is shown with the same amber colour like any other.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The BIOS isn't always the problem... if it takes three seconds for the video card to become usable (fans running, memory initialized, etc), you're not going to get less than a three-second perceived boot time, no matter how fast you make everything else happen. The same goes for other hardware. If they happen in series (or worse, if they have to happen in series), then that can add up - that can be mitigated by the BIOS, of course, but I can see why boot times might get longer.
This is absolutely part of the problem. The power supply needs to turn on its fans and generate stable voltage, then the case fans and mobo power conditioning needs to stabilize. Then you get to touch the BIOS, which probably does a staggered startup of most devices to prevent power supply droop. As stated, all of this hardware then needs to reach a usable state, both mechanically and electrically.
In a car, the power supply is DC to start with, the hardware is smaller and simpler (requiring fewer moving parts to wait for), the BIOS has mostly sensors to startup (If not done within the OS), and the OS needs only to load the basics and a few drivers from ROM. One second startups are common for small embedded systems, including to embedded versions of Linux. Just don't expect it on a desktop.
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