
Lab Breakthrough Brings Instant-On Computers Closer - peter123
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/04/instant-on-comp.html
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asciilifeform
My Commodore-64 was instant-on.

The entire concept of "booting" is idiotically obsolete. RAM should be treated
as nothing more than a cache of disk, and only a single 0..N byte address
space should be visible to software. The acts of software installation and
loading into memory become identical. A 1960s mainframe was organized like
this. Why aren't modern PCs? Orthogonal persistence is entirely logical and
trivial to implement in hardware.

~~~
jerf
"The acts of software installation and loading into memory become identical."

Uh, that's already how software loading works. Shared libraries and
executables get mapped into memory space and can be lazily loaded (though
that's not always a good idea) through bog-standard VM systems. You'll note
this has not solved the boot problem. It doesn't matter how cleverly disk-
mapped memory is implemented if your critical path is 100MB of stuff that must
be pulled from the disk before your system can be used.

~~~
asciilifeform
> 100MB of stuff that must be pulled from the disk

If the 100MB is stored as a contiguous array of bytes, the process would take
no more than a few seconds. Other inefficiencies are at work here.

Also: do you ever wonder why the BIOS takes so long to initialize devices?
There is no solid, watertight reason for it. It just so happens that most BIOS
(esp. extension card ROM) vendors do not give a rat's ass about initialization
speed.

------
3ds
It's odd how the development on the linux-based moblin operating system is not
mentioned as this boots up in 13 sec on regular hardware and up to 5 seconds
using a solid state disk.

