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Linux achieves 1 second boot From the 'how much faster can it go' files:
The race for the fastest Linux boot has been going on for about a year at this point and now we've got a new winner. Embedded Linux vendor MontaVista today is announcing the demonstration of a 1 second Linux boot. In contrast the fastest production Linux releases today are in the 20-25 second range. To be fair, MontaVista's Linux with the 1 second boot is embedded and designed specifically for the Freescale Semiconductor MPC5121e hardware built on Power Architecture technology. That's not to say they can't get the same performance on other architectures, it's that is the hardware on which the first 1 second boot is being demonstrated. "The achievement of one second boot from cold power to operational status is a breakthrough in embedded Linux performance," said Jim Ready, CTO of MontaVista Software in a statement. "It's always been thought that embedded Linux could never perform at this level of speed and efficiency." Though I know that desktop and server Linux vendors will continue to reduce the boot time of their respective Linux distributions - MontaVista has a clear advantage. An embedded Linux is built for specific hardware use cases which enables the vendor to deploy a Linux kernel with a minimal amount of additional drivers and utilities. In contrast a desktop Linux distribution, needs more drivers (for peripherals etc) at boot time. In my opinion, it is all the various items that must load at boot time that will ultimately prove to be the hard ceiling for boot time performance. Will MontaVista achieve sub 1 second boot times at some point? I don't doubt it. As they continue to work with their semi-conductor partners it's likely just a matter of time. Will desktop and/or server Linux hit 1 second boot times? Yes I think so. Again based on that hard ceiling, the speed with which drivers can be loaded by the Linux kernel and the speed with which a processor can load items in parallel will help to one day achieve instant-on performance for many Linux use cases. **UPDATED** Got a great comment from Linux kernel developer Arjan van de Ven (of Kernel Oops fame) he wrote: Question is .. they boot to what? 0 TrackBacksListed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Linux achieves 1 second boot. TrackBack URL for this entry: https://swarm.jupitermedia.com/mt-tb.cgi/8466 9 CommentsLeave a comment |
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Question is .. they boot to what?
If it's just the kernel, 1 second is not special; Moblin and others boot the kernel (including the drivers) in 0.6 seconds, with 0.5 being not far away.
If it's to a full glibc/udev/hal/etc runlevel 3 userspace it's an achievement indeed.. that's still at around 2 seconds for Moblin...
Yawn. The folks over at embeddedarm.com have been touting subsecond Linux boot times for a while now. But again, this is all for very specialized embedded systems, not general purpose computers. With some tweaking, I have my Fedora 11 setup (on modern hardware) booting to a login screen in about 5 seconds, but I am not sure it would ever be possible to get much faster without major changes to the hardware and bios.
My goodness! Starting my DVD recorder takes longer!
"f it's to a full glibc/udev/hal/etc runlevel 3 userspace it's an achievement indeed.. that's still at around 2 seconds for Moblin..."
Yeah, and since when glibc/udev/hal is used in embedded? Some solution doesn't even use a libc (and almost all of them have something less bloated than glibc).
And don't forget we are talking about a CPU with maximum of 750 MIPS (compared to the even the notoriously underpowered Atoms having at least 3300 MIPS performance).
This is for situations where a long delay between a watchdog reset and the resuming the interrupted operation can cost lives, not some useless linux toy.
MontaVista boots to an in vehicle automotive application (read: not just the kernel). See the demo here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MontaVistaSoftware#play/uploads/1/-l_DSZe8_F8
F++ OFF MONTAVISTA -
ARM9 board boots Debian in 0.69 seconds
http://www.embeddedarm.com/about/resource.php?item=343
So according to that YouTube clip, they use DMA on NOR flash for speed and load the kernel and initramfs in parallel (which is kinda neat).
I'm sure in embedded they're using static dev, no udev, no glibc, etc. And of course the Moblin install will have many more kernel drivers and no doubt a larger initramfs.
Still the demo is impressive. Looks like they just powered off the monitor and turned it back on ;-)
-c
They highly optimise the kernel. And load not compressed stuff from fast memory. Or such.
In the video you see the OS "blink" on a number of times.
I plead ignorance in not hearing or seeing anything about this company before. I have to admit that at first I though that Adam was a M$ troll due to the Vista in the MontaVistaSoftware. As far as the next comment goes I think that any achievement is worth mention as it goes to show that there are definitely alternatives to M$. The general public think that M$ is all there is and may think that this is a M$ product based on M$ Vista. I'm surprised that they haven't tried to crush MontaVistaSoftware much like they did to Lindows.