< 1 Second Linux Boot Time

by on February 26, 2010 in Linux

One of my most recent projects at work has been to achieve a ‘less than one second’ Linux boot time on an OMAP3530 EVM development board. The following video shows the outcome of this work.

The above video demonstrates Linux booting and then starting an application which captures video from an NTSC video camera (via composite) and renders it to the LCD display.

In fact the first user land init process is started in less than half a second (0.464 seconds) demonstrating just how easily Linux can be tuned to get to a state of functionality in a very short amount of time!

I will follow up this post later to provide a little more information.

[© 2011 embedded-bits.co.uk]

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About Andrew Murray

Andrew has more than 5 years of relevant commercial experience, a first class degree in Software Engineering and is the founder of Embedded Bits Limited. His day-to-day role fulfils his passion for learning and provides him with plenty of embedded Linux experience including kernel and embedded applications development on a wide variety of platforms. He loves to talk about boot time reduction and has performed a number of presentations on the topic at technical conferences - he has also been successful in achieving sub-second cold boot on Linux based products. Feel free to drop him an email at amurray@embedded-bits.co.uk
View all posts by Andrew Murray →

12 Responses to “< 1 Second Linux Boot Time”

  1. Nick February 27, 2010 at 2:33 am # Reply

    OMFG!!!1!!1!one! I think I just had a nerdgasm.

  2. Kiril Zyapkov February 27, 2010 at 9:56 am # Reply

    Quite impressive indeed! I’d love to see more — ultimately, I’d like to apply your techniques on a SheevaPlug :)

  3. Ben Smith February 27, 2010 at 5:17 pm # Reply

    My WinMo phone takes longer just to switch from Email to Solitaire!

  4. DaVince February 28, 2010 at 4:09 pm # Reply

    So, just wondering… Was it really easily tuned? What kernel features did you leave out or modify to get it to boot so fast?

  5. Michael Wolfinger March 1, 2010 at 9:45 am # Reply

    Very impressive! Looking forward to getting more info. Cheers!

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