Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The 1-Second Linux Boot

Posted by timothy on from the unexamined-boot-is-not-worth-booting dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Less than one second Linux boot! This video shows an OMAP3530 capturing video data from a camera and rendering it to an LCD display — the video appears on the LCD display in less than a second from reset."

3 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. The Register also has the story. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Complete with a video:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/14/montavista_boasts_1sec_linux_boot/

    1. Re:The Register also has the story. by somenickname · · Score: 4, Informative

      I find it disturbing that you have to sit through a 2:30 minute powerpoint presentation accompanied by 1980s porn music in order to see the 1 second boot time. For those looking for just the boot time, it occurs between 1:05 and 1:06 seconds in the video.

  2. Ok... I'll take it by Foredecker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok, so that is interesting, but only just... This isnt desktop Linux so Im not sure why you are saying "eat that".

    The OS is DMAed directly into system memory. Ok, thats kind of spiffy. That means its been "pre-loaded" which is already located.

    Let me put this in perspective. Back in the mid 90s I worked at AMD. On the ÉlanSC520 system on a chip (133mhz 486 class):

    • Booting of Windows CE, QNX, Psos, VXworks and other real time operating systems to a running state (like these guys) was measured in 100s of milliseconds.
    • Even better, the SC520 supported Execute in Place (XIP) - FLASH was directly conntected and had a controlerl off the CPUs cache - it was fast. This let the OS and applicatoins run right out of flash from reset - no "booting" at all. Systems could easily initialize in 10s of MS and be fully running - with graphics in a few 100ms. This included a running network stack. Pretty spiffy for the old school.
    • There was a company that was doing this with an early version of Linux back then too. Their company name started with an R - but I cannot remember the rest. I think someone bought them. This was fast too.

    So, this really isnt that spectacular - cool yes, ground breaking no.

    -Foredecker

    --
    Jibe!