Embedded Linux company boasts 1-second boot

The race to faster boot times is on.

MontaVista, an embedded Linux company based in Santa Clara, Calif., said Tuesday its latest system is able to boot in one second and released a video that shows a vehicle dashboard system going from cold boot into a "fully operational" state in that time.

The one-second timing may not be directly translatable to a desktop Linux OS environment, however, because booting a full-fledged OS requires additional drivers and processes to be launched.

Intel's Netbook Linux OS, Moblin, is also eyeing fast boot times. The chipmaker recently partnered with Phoenix Technologies, which produces a fast-boot technology called HyperSpace, promising to bring the technology to the Moblin project.

The software consists of a stripped down Linux environment with a browser and Wi-Fi software, meant to go from bootup to the Web quickly.

According to reports, Moblin integrating HyperSpace should be able to go from off to the Web in less than 10 seconds.

Competitor Canonical has also said its latest release Ubuntu 9.04 is focused on booting faster.

Victoria Ho of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.

Embedded OS's have been booting in less than 1 second for years. (Yes, including Linux)

[bassukhan]

The video demonstration merely seems like any computer machine but more like an old speedometer. I think booting an actual system with Linux kernel cannot be shortened beyond 5-10 seconds because that's time it takes to load the drivers. Even if you're able to load it quicker than that, you'll to wait for the same amount of time till you login to desktop Gnome, KDE or anything equal. <br /><br />However its can be a great achievement but its hard to believe what Embeded Linux has to say about this much of quickness without any live or a real world example ;)

[zyxxy]

I'll second the first comment. Embedded Unix variants have been booting in under 1 second for some time. I don't see the big news in this. To the second comment, I have personally ported a BSD kernel to a PowerPC running at 450Mhz and had it boot to a root prompt in less than one second. No desktop environment, just a console shell at the serial console.

[tech_crazy]

Yup, embedded OSes have been booting under 1 sec for quite some time. RTOS also have response times in the micro seconds.<br /><br />I have the embedded Splashtop installed onto the SSD in my Asus motherboard and it boots up to Firefox in less than 10 seconds.

[codynews]

My old phones used to turn on about that fast... So that old crap FTW!

[bowenthebeard]

Meh,<br /><br />Who needs 1 second boot-up time? My Ubuntu 9.04 is booting in under 30 seconds on a three year old laptop. That's probably including the 10 seconds it counts off, waiting for me to hit "Enter" in GRUB. Before I can really begin to feel impatient about anything, the computer is completely on. Someone should let Microsoft know that other operating systems don't take 5-10 minutes to boot up or shutdown.