Instant on PC
Do you ever wonder why booting up a computer takes soo long? Why doesn’t it turn on instantly like a TV or DVD player? As it turns out, engineers at MontaVista Software thought the same thing, and have finally figured out how to tweak Linux to boot in under 1 second … yes, that’s “1″ as in “Done!”
Although they achieved this amazing feat on a specific embedded processor, MontaVista claims that the same techniques can be applied to standard Linux software. Here is a summary of their technique:
1. Optimize the bootloader by omitting unneeded drivers, etc. (boot time now down to 7s)
2. Use DMA to copy some boot code into the main memory cache, to execute tasks in parallel (now down to 4s)
3. Do various tricks such as loading the customer’s app directly into the page cache (now down to 1s)
Simply amazing. I hope this idea catches on soon and gets folded into mainsteam OSes. In the meantime, I will stick with my usual routine. Turn on my computer, walk to the kitchen and brew coffee. By the time I’m back, my apps are happily waiting for me. On a good day, it feels like it’s instant on. 