The 1-Second Linux Boot

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."

The Register also has the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete with a video:

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

Ok... I'll take it

[Foredecker]

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 [amd.com] 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

Re:Sense?

[wagnerrp]

I have to shut it down because hibernation uses the battery and I need that power to last all the way to work.

Standby uses battery to continually refresh the memory. Hibernation dumps the memory to disk and powers down. There is no battery consumption save whatever is needed to run the clock.

Boot times

[fm6]

I just bought a cheap digital TV that takes almost 5 seconds to boot. Sad.

Re:The Register also has the story.

[somenickname]

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.

Re:Boot times

[bill_mcgonigle]

So? Many older analog televisions took up to 10 seconds to "boot", because thats how long it took to warm up the cathode ray tube.

My grandparents had an early color set that was nearly a minute. But, so what, 5 seconds, a minute, go take a pee and get a snack.

1-second embedded linux is very significant because some vendors use proprietary OS stacks because they boot faster.

Already done faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing really new. In fact, they boot slower on a faster processor than earlier acheivments. This is mostly an ad for MontaVista.

See http://elinux.org/Main_Page for a lot more information om bootup.

I think the record is about 200ms by Sony.

Re:1-Second First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

The video is also on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUWBkIquQaI) - The website seems a bit bogged down.

Re:1-Second First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

The video is a YouTube video and can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUWBkIquQaI The website in this post seems to keep cutting out...

How would it know this?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Typically the only reason my linux machines get rebooted is precisely because the hardware HAS changed. Or the kernel has. What other reason can there be to reboot?

And as for your assertion that linux wouldn't be any better, I get a cheap netbook with a joke SSD and it boots faster. (Aspire One ZG5)

Windows boot time is not entirely fair however, it tries to do a lot of things. People think that all a computer does is draw a desktop, but to get all that in order a lot of hardware has to be configured and this includes dealing with delays. For instance spinning up the HD's and allow them time to report. There is often even a bios setting to allow extra delay's so slower hardware has time to respond.

Re:Why not do this for desktop OSs?

[evilviper]

What I've never quite understood is why most operating systems boot every time like it's the first time.

Because you told it to do so. If you didn't want it to reboot, you should have suspended or hibernated the system instead.

Really, all of that work can be done in milliseconds, not minutes. Operating systems should just read the ~100MB "ready for use" image from a nice contiguous section of the disk, write it straight into memory, and then do a quick sanity check for changed hardware.

You've reinvented Hibernate mode, with it's existing limitations, and more mistakes you've added... Anyone who's used hibernate know it mostly works, but some devices need to be more fully initialized (like your video card) and starting to use it when it's in a different state than it last was, is a sure recipe for disaster. Despite claims to the contrary, I'd say S3 Suspend is easier to get working CORRECTLY, than Hibernate, and with power requirements less indistinguishable from the "off" load, and boot times of <2 seconds, S3 is far better all around.

I continue to use this old PC (Socket-A MSI Mobo) as my desktop because S3 Suspend mode works (almost) perfectly with FreeBSD-6.x. The ability sit down at my PC, hit the power button, and have all my apps open where I left them (not just the minimal OS up and running) is incredibly valuable. It's a real shame so few people have had the opportunity to experience it. In addition, it's great to be able to just get up and walk away from my computer at any time, for any reason without giving it a second thought... because in 10 minutes it'll be using no power, and when I come back, it'll be right where I left it. Never mind the implications for a UPS-powered system, like a system left right where it was when you last used it, which can be powered from the smallest battery for hundreds of hours, easily.