1 second Linux boot to Qt!

January 13th, 2011 by Andrew Murray

At the end of last year, to demonstrate my company’s swiftBoot service, I put together a rather impressive demo. Using a Renesas MS7724 development board I was able to achieve a one second cold Linux boot to a Qt application. Here’s the demo…

Many people see a demo like this and assume there are ‘smoke and mirrors’ or that we’ve implemented a suspend to disk solution. This is genuinely a cold boot including UBoot (2009-01), Linux kernel (2.6.31-rc7) and Qt Embedded Open Source 4.6.2. We’ve not applied any specific intellectual property but instead spent time analysing where boot delays are coming from and simply optimising them away. The majority of the modifications we make usually fall into the category of ‘removing things that aren’t required’, ‘optimising things that are required’, or ‘taking a new approach to solving problems’ and are tailored very precisely to the needs of the ‘product’.

If you’re interested in exactly what modification I made and a little more about the approach taken – you may be interested in these slides which I presented at ELC-E 2010 – I’m also expecting a video of this presentation to appear on Free Electrons in the near future.

You may also remember my last demo based on an OMAP3530 EVM. [© 2011 embedded-bits.co.uk]

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49 Responses to “1 second Linux boot to Qt!”

  1. Embedded Linux 1-Second Cold Boot To QT | JetLib News Says:

    [...] reader writes “The blog post shows an embedded device cold booting Linux to a QT application all in just one second. This post also includes a link which describes what modifications were made to achieve [...]

  2. Android OS news » Embedded Linux 1-Second Cold Boot To QT Says:

    [...] reader writes “The blog post shows an embedded device cold booting Linux to a QT application all in just one second. This post also includes a link which describes what modifications were made to achieve [...]

  3. Joey Says:

    Sick, just sick!
    Some great work!
    You should look and see how much optimization you could do on server and desktop/laptop systems on regular distro’s, that would be great!

  4. J. Onoma Says:

    Serious kudos! BTW: How did you interface the camera to this board? Which LCD did you use?

  5. shahk Says:

    Very nice work

  6. Name(required) Says:

    Can you provide the video and slides for people who don’t do flash?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#Open_web_versus_proprietary_plugins

  7. ethana2 Says:

    What on *earth* is that 1000 ms waste? I have an Intel X-25M SSD running Ubuntu, that second spent doing nothing is insane!

  8. Bent Hansen Says:

    Looks nice, but maybe you should optimize the touch screenspeed instead, there is quite a delay when you press the screen.

    A speed up there, makes a lot more sense than the booting time.

  9. Andy Says:

    PDF of the slides can be found here: http://elinux.org/images/f/f7/RightApproachMinimalBootTimes.pdf

  10. Hrafnkell Says:

    I am also interested in the hardware side of this – what display are you using with the dev board?

  11. Fefe Says:

    My Macbook Pro boots faster.

  12. someone Says:

    I wish my Android was so fast booting.

  13. Leigh Porter Says:

    I think Android devs need to do a little of this.. May tablet takes about 30 seconds to boot!

  14. Nils Says:

    I think my coffeemaker takes longer to boot ;)

  15. Deafboy Says:

    Theese guys are masters of the universe. My TV (Samsung) is booting around 5-6 seconds…

  16. 1 second Linux boot! | ZDNet Says:

    [...] This is seriously impressive – 1 second Linux boot to a Qt application from a cold boot! [...]

  17. Matthew C. Tedder Says:

    So.. Can we use this to make a new FYETI (F* You Evil Telecom Industry) device?

  18. josh Says:

    Doesn’t Youtube have a HTML5 option?

  19. Micha Says:

    Very Impressive!
    My Android Phone needs around a minute to boot…

  20. 1 second Linux boot to Qt! « Embedded Bits « Netcrema – creme de la social news via digg + delicious + stumpleupon + reddit Says:

    [...] 1 second Linux boot to Qt! « Embedded Bitsembedded-bits.co.uk [...]

  21. Eds Says:

    That’s amazing!
    Could you please tell me/us what display are you using?
    Thanks for SouthAmerica!

  22. steffen Says:

    on a standard system you save big time by disabling console output and reducing hundreds of lines of init shellscript into the single page that is usually needed for the 5 services that joe average is running. linux itself is also rather fast if you’re not unlucky with drivers. BIOS and init script bloat are the main problems.

  23. Hello world! | texnex Says:

    [...] Entwicklern bei Swift-Boot ist es gelungen, ein Embedded-Linux-System soweit zu optimieren, dass man binnen einer Sekunde nach dem Einschalten [...]

  24. BerndhateineFrage Says:

    This thing needs 8 kw ? Means this Kilowatt?

  25. 1 Second Boot: la nuova demo by SwisfBoot « Crismon's Blog Says:

    [...] VIA | http://www.embedded-bits.co.uk [...]

  26. Mike Says:

    RIGHT!!!!!!!!

  27. Dennis Mai – Der Technikblog » Embedded Linux in einer Sekunde gebootet Says:

    [...] Entwicklern bei Swift-Boot ist es gelungen, ein Embedded-Linux-System soweit zu optimieren, dass man binnen einer Sekunde nach dem Einschalten [...]

  28. Загрузка за 1 секунду. - Linux в Беларуси Says:

    [...] Ранее уже была новость о новой технологии, позволяющей грузить Linux на встроенные устройства за 4 секунды. Товарищи решили не останавливаться на достигнутом и добились загрузки за 1 секунду, правда немного изменив платформу. Подробности и видео здесь: http://www.embedded-bits.co.uk/2011/1-second-linux-boot-to-qt/ [...]

  29. links for 2011-01-14 « Where Is All This Leading To? Says:

    [...] 1 second Linux boot to QT! « Embedded Bits (tags: linux boot fast qt embedded) [...]

  30. 1 second Linux boot! | Pak Galaxy | Information & Telecome News Says:

    [...] 1 second Linux boot! This is seriously impressive – 1 second Linux boot to a Qt application from a cold boot! [...]

  31. sisirnath Says:

    cool to see the sub-second boot. How did you manage to get two lines (text wrap) on a button ? I tried to get around it but was not able to find a standard way to do, Can you PLS throw some light on it.

  32. Quickies Says:

    [...] Thoughts No Comments Cum bootează Linux într-o secundă? Păi așa…Faith Divides Us, Death Unites UsOneTeam – un nou client IM pentru LinuxUbuntu theme [...]

  33. Andy Says:

    From memory I believe it was an ActionButton.

  34. ct Says:

    I don’t think so. Giving it 8kilowatt would burn that thing before it can boot

  35. 1 δευτερόλεπτο για να bootάρει Linux με Qt! « elkosmas.gr Says:

    [...] λίγες ημέρες η Swiftboot παρουσίασε ένα σύστημα επίδειξης τεχνολογίας χρησιμοποιώντας μια πλατφόρμα ανάπτυξης MS7724 της Renesas [...]

  36. Ben Says:

    It’s a demo application for a home automation system, I presume the “home” is using 8KW, with the total usage for that day being 120KWh.

  37. God Says:

    “Thanks for SouthAmerica!”

    You’re welcome!

  38. zeugs am sonntag (14) « blubberfisch Says:

    [...] / text] one second linux boot to qt! (embedded [...]

  39. Anonymous Says:

    [...] [...]

  40. Pankaj Says:

    Really??? Not mine :(

  41. Linux boots into Qt dashboard in 1 second!! « Q8GEEKS.ORG Says:

    [...] Source [...]

  42. 1 second Linux boot to Qt! « Embedded Bits | WORDPRESS! Says:

    [...] Original post by acant [...]

  43. Aras Says:

    Very Cool!

  44. iBlonde Says:

    Liar like an apple eater !!!

  45. 1 Second Linux Boot – And It Is No Gimmick ! | @tuxguru Says:

    [...] this is what the people who implemented this awesome feat have to say about this exercise (and I quote). Many people see a demo like this [...]

  46. џамбасовске вести » 1 Sec. Linux Boot! Says:

    [...] This is seriously impressive – 1 second Linux boot to a Qt application from a cold boot! [...]

  47. UK Embedded » Blog Archive » The Right Approach to Minimal Boot Times [ELCE Video] Says:

    [...] If you wish to see the accompanying slides of YouTube video – please see my earlier post. [...]

  48. Nowoczesne mobilne systemy operacyjne bazują na Linuksie – dlaczego? Says:

    [...] m.in. miernik zużycia energii elektrycznej i kamerę tak, by uruchamiał się w jedną sekundę [1] [2]. AKPC_IDS += [...]

  49. Red Lea Hotel Says:

    Red Lea Hotel…

    [...]Embedded Bits» Blog Archive » 1 second Linux boot to Qt![...]…

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