New Phoenix BIOS Starts Windows 7 Boot In 1 Second 437
suraj.sun excerpts from a tantalizing Engadget post: "Phoenix is showing off a few interesting things at IDF, but the real standout is their new Instant Boot BIOS [video here], a highly optimized UEFI implementation that can start loading an OS in just under a second. Combined with Windows 7's optimized startup procedure, that means you're looking at incredibly short boot times — we saw a retrofitted Dell Adamo hit the Windows desktop in 20 seconds, while a Lenovo T400s with a fast SSD got there in under 10."
yeah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
After you see the desktop it's another minute for all the system tray crap to load. And if you're stuck with corporate antivirus? May as well throw some cinderblocks in the trunk of that nice sportscar and watch it do 0 to 60 like an arthritic Ford Pinto.
Re:yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
... but if you're building a computer that requires a fast startup time - like an in-car PC - 10 second startup time is a godsend.
Windows 7? (Score:1, Insightful)
What's with the Windows 7 plug?
Booting into Ubuntu will be amazingly fast with this Phoenix BIOS. Can't wait until I can get something like this for my PC.
I don't understand the obsession... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of us keep our machines running all the time. I would think a quicker return from suspend or hibernate would be more useful.
Re:BIOS (Score:4, Insightful)
5? WIth a nice raidcard, full memory check and some other POST tests I've seen them easily go over 10 minutes. Some were definately close to 15 minutes from my experiences.
The question here is, what will you trade for this? Faster boot probably means something will be skipped.
Re:I don't understand the obsession... (Score:5, Insightful)
The two reasons for ever-on PCs is either when the user doesn't like to wait the (in my case) minutes for the boot sequence to run through: whether that's Linux or Microsoft, it's far too long. /. base, so there's no need to identify yourselves - I get it), if it gets a few million more PCs turned off then it's a good thing.
The second reason is when they're running stuff in that background: a server or data collection, or just a long download,. Obviously in this case, faster booting won't help but ignoring these power-users (which is probably a big proportion of the
Hilarious video (Score:5, Insightful)
"Don't take my word for it, take Microsoft's word" !!!
I think I'm going to trust a random schmuck any day rather than Microsoft.
Re:BIOS (Score:4, Insightful)
With HDDs, especially the very fast ones, spin-up current is substantially higher than operating current. If you have a bunch of them in the same place, you either have to massively overspec the 12volt rail, or just stagger the spin-ups and do them in batches. Each drive can only spin up so fast, and you can only be sure they are all working after they have all spun up.
Highly Optimized UEFI (Score:3, Insightful)
Means Apple paid Intel to mangle it so it will not boot OS X. Is it any wonder that no EFI motherboards are on the market?
Re:yeah, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Your confusing hardware and code. it's more to do with the ssd then windows code.
Re:I don't understand the obsession... (Score:2, Insightful)
A good sleep / hibernate implementation that doesn't use much (or any) power would be indistinguishable from hyperfast booting.
You do know that the hibernate (suspend to disk) function does not require any power (once the computer enters in hibernation state).
What we need is very fast hibernation algorithms implemented in fast non-volatile memory such as Flash or MRAM.
Re:OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it hasn't, and if it had, it would have nothing to do with OS X, and waking a computer from suspend has nothing to do with the BIOS POST time. Why do you Mac fags insist on advertising your computers -- fraudulently! -- every time something vaguely related comes up?
Re:yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Marketing:
Windows now boots (the bios) in under a second giving you a faster user experience (but a usable desktop in roughly 10 minutes)
Linux boots (to a usable desktop) in 25 seconds.
Reading without the bits in brackets, which do you think is best? That's what marketing is all about.
Fast Booting is Important (Score:1, Insightful)
Fast booting is important because it means that you can actually turn your machine off instead of keeping it on all the time. I have a Mac Mini PowerPC which we never turn off because booting takes way too long.
However, Windows "cheats" because it starts the sign on process before it is actually ready to begin. Various background processes are still starting up by the time you see your desktop. Other OS systems are taking similar approaches now. My Ubuntu Linux system comes up in less than 10 seconds after the BOIS check, but I still have to wait several seconds after I see my desktop before I am able to connect to my network. I can bring up FireFox as long as I don't have to load any remote webpages. I can create an email as long as I don't have to send it anywhere. So, fastbooting and shaving off the other 9 seconds doesn't exactly do me a world of good.
Re:BIOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. I'd tend to agree with GP. If you're a critical service, you want on-line redundancy, so you roll over immediately and it doesn't matter how long the second server takes to reboot. If you're not critical and you don't have redundant servers, 5 minutes of down-time probably isn't much worse than 1... you just have to schedule it at an off-peak time.
Re:It will also "start to boot" Linux in 1 Second! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually there is a relationship. It's called a "marketing deal". Phoenix and Microsoft promote their work in combination, expecting "bigger than the sum of its parts" effect out of it.
Apparently it worked, seeing how some people here think it's really great that an OS boots in freakin' 10 seconds. When Coreboot with Linux does it literally in 3.
Re:BIOS (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really, the magic is in the wording. "Start loading the OS within 1 second" means it's just bypassing a whole lot of the network checks. The average BIOS starts loading the OS within about 1.5 seconds, so this isn't exactly a huge difference.
This isn't even a windows thing or a linux thing, as it's strictly about how fast the bios passes to loading the OS from the hard drive.
Re:BIOS (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not going to get that kind of uptime from a Windows box even without problems, thanks to patch tuesdays. Of course, it depends on how downtime is defined. If you use Microsoft's definition, "scheduled maintenance windows" are not classified as down time, but the rest of the world defines such things as down time. This is how they skewed the numbers to get such high uptime statistics for their "get the FUD" campaign.
without redefining down time like Microsoft does, you will never achieve that kind of uptime on Windows unless a) the box NEVER get infected b) you NEVER install the Windows updates and c) you NEVER change the configuration or change/update any software.
Re:BIOS (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you actually read the patches that come along on patch Tuesday or do you just mindlessly install them?
If you did the former, you'd see you don't actually need to install them and reboot every Tuesday, you could simply queue them up until there's a critical patch. Some you don't even need to install at all, if there's a critical flaw in IIS but you haven't got the IIS service enabled and never intend to, it's not worth rebooting the server over.
You're making the mistake a lot of bad admins make- assuming you need to install the latest and greatest the second it's there. You don't, you only need to install patches to fix issues you're having or to fix security flaws that actually effect you. Yes this means you actually need to understand security and be able to judge whether a particular security flaw is exploitable in your situation or not.
Regardless, what it comes down to is this, if you're having to reboot your servers more than a few times a year then you're not running a network as well as an IT professional really should do.
Re:BIOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BIOS (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not going to get that kind of uptime from a Windows box even without problems, thanks to patch tuesdays.
You don't _have_ to patch, you know, only if you are (or think you will be) impacted by the problems fixed.
Of course, it depends on how downtime is defined. If you use Microsoft's definition, "scheduled maintenance windows" are not classified as down time, but the rest of the world defines such things as down time.
No, it doesn't. Most SLAs allow for scheduled maintenance and do not consider that downtime. In any event, if your environment is such that the service must remain available during maintenance periods, then you can't do it with a single server, regardless of what your OS is.
without redefining down time like Microsoft does, you will never achieve that kind of uptime on Windows unless a) the box NEVER get infected b) you NEVER install the Windows updates and c) you NEVER change the configuration or change/update any software.
If your requirement allows for only minutes or hours of downtime per year, then you *must* have multiple servers to be able to confidently deliver it. Once you have multiple servers, individual server outages for scheduled maintenance, are irrelevant.
My computer boots in less than 2 seconds (Score:3, Insightful)