Intel Slashes Computer Startup Times 435
An anonymous reader writes "At Intel's Developer Forum in Taiwan, Intel introduced a new Non-volatile caching technology called 'Robson'." The new Robson cache technology allows computers to start up almost immediately and load programs much faster. Intel declined to comment on the specifics of how the technology works only saying that 'More information will be revealed later'.
Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
FTFA: "It's up to the [equipment manufacturers] to decide how it will be implemented. My guess is that enterprise users will likely see it first," [Mooly Eden, VP and GM of Intel's mobile platform group] said.
S.Jobs: "Oh, yeah?"
My theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Should Boost Battery Life a Lot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If this kind if thing is a concern (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't get the "instant-on" craze (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, I don't care how long my computer takes to boot. With decent sleep and hibernate modes, I don't need to boot more than a couple times a month anyway - and that's usually rebooting for software updates. (If you're wondering, this is on a PowerBook G4 laptop).
It takes my computer under a second to wake up from sleep mode. How much more "instant" does it need to get?
Now, those quick-loading programs, on the other hand, do sound appealing...
Re:The big secret... (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone RTFA? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think PC Hardware and Software manufacturers really do need to work on the glacial boot times that PCs have. Unfortunately, this is only a solution to some of the minor problems, and not the main ones.
Re:If this kind if thing is a concern (Score:3, Interesting)
Instant Startup Isn't All New (Score:5, Interesting)
At any rate, the theory behind instant startup isn't too hard, it's just an engineering implementation.
All you do is make it so that, following shutdown procedures, the computer immediately switches to startup, except keeping track of the fact it was "shut down," not "restarted." When it finishes restarting, it writes the startup RAM state to disk, then turns itself off.
Upon being turned on, the computer just writes the stored RAM state back from the disk to RAM, and presto! It's just like starting up the computer, except really fast. At least, that was the theory. I've been sort of surprised not to see this implemented, it seems like everyone would like to see fast startups, but hardly anyone cares how long it takes to shut down (especially with soft power)- you're done with he computer anyway. I've heard that a lot of work goes into decreasing boot times for Windows and OSX. It seems like a lot less work to implement an "instant startup" plan, and then not have to care much if startup takes forever, than to carefully track, fiddle with, and optimize everything that happens during startup.
Of course, with this system, restarting after a crash would not be instant, it would take just as long as ever. So it might work to greater advantage on some operating systems than others, depending on why you usually restart.
Re:The big secret... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe, anyway.
Let's hope theres a quick way to zap this saved (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wonder if this is MRAM (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow. This *IS* MRAM.
From the MRAM site: [mram-info.com]
MRAM is a memory (RAM) technology that uses electron spin to store information. MRAM has been called "the ideal memory" - potentially combining the density of DRAM with the speed of SRAM and non-volatility of FLASH memory or hard disk, and all this while consuming a very low amount of power. MRAM can resist high radiation, and can operate in extreme temperature conditions. It is likely that we'll see the first MRAM in applications that need such properties.
MRAM is being researched by the SSRC at UCSC [ucsc.edu]. From my understanding of what they are doing they are using the non-volatile MRAM as sort of a L3 cache between the RAM and the processor. This stuff is wicked fast, so the response time from RAM to the processor is taken down something like an order of magnitude. If the OS could prefetch things from RAM to MRAM in some intelligent way they could get the system memory access time down, and speed up things overall that use lots of memory accesses.... things like Booting, and opening Acrobat....
This could be quite neet if they release it....
GO SLUGS!
Re:I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If this kind if thing is a concern (Score:4, Interesting)
I kid, I kid.
I reboot maybe once a week. However, I also work in IT and a reboot really does solve a great majority of problems on the platform. It's not so much the OS as other programs. The worst part is that Windows doesn't have an unconditional kill so some process just never dies and never lets go of all the files and handles. So when you go to restart the program, it fails because a previous instance is still hanging onto the files/handles. So we have to reboot the machine.
The thing that drags when we reboot our big Dell workstations isn't so much loading the OS as loading other programs and the SCSI detection process. Then there's the log in script that runs. Robson will only really help with a small chunk of the total boot-up time. As our computers get more networked, I expect network lag to drag us down as well during boot-time.
Dual Boots (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What do you mean, "one can dream"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because when Microsoft looks good Intel Looks good. Most people do not know the difference between the OS and the hardware. When the OS is slow they get new hardware, figuring their computer is just old and slow. While in the short term this may sound good but what will probably happen people will be frustrated with the intel system (Figuring it is a peace of junk) and Go with AMD or what ever else. And by chance they may go with a PC manufacture that doesn't pre-load the computer crap so they get a computer that seems extremely fast so people my not go with Intel again.
Windows is even more embarassingly beaten when you compare OS X Server with Windows 2000 or 2003 Server. Those fuckers take FOREVER to reboot.
This again may point to the hardware. A lot of time when I see a window server boot a bulk of the time is before it gets to the OS Level it is just probing for SCSI devices or doing a detailed check on all the ram (The issues TFA is saying it improved) If you want to see slow take a look at a Sun Enterprise system, they can take 5 minutes before they show you anything on the screen. The reason for this slowness is the fact that because these systems should go down often they need a full check on the hardware to make sure nothing is wrong after month/years of uptime.
Also the issue with Windows vs. OSX Server is that Windows can run on Any Box so it needs to check for as many possibilities as possible. While OSX knows what to do when it asks for the hardware configuration and the hardware responds XServe G5 32gb RAM. You can fault windows on a lot of thing, But I give them credit for being able to run on all the crap it does.
IME, OS X boot times beat the living shit out of Windows boot times. I've seen years-old, sub-1GHz G4s boot faster than home-built (i.e. lacking all the extra, cycle-eating horseshit programs that hobble your average Dell or HP PC) 2.0+GHz Wintel boxes with fresh installs of XP.
I don't know I have seen XP having a rather snappy boot up time, it is about on par with OS X. The only real difference is XP tends to still boot after the start button appears, allowing you to access the interface. While OS X takes a little longer in the Splash screen.
Re:What do you mean, "one can dream"? (Score:3, Interesting)
When Windows 2000 came out, Intel owners were immediately blessed with a conflict-free APIC controller. Meanwhile AMD users were punching their nuts over the "IRQ 9 syndrome". That sort of thing makes Intel look good.
> faster than home-built (i.e. lacking all the extra, cycle-eating horseshit programs that hobble your average Dell or HP PC)
There's 0 evidence that Dell/HP boots slower than home-built. If anything their bios flips through much faster than generic.
Re:I hope this is real (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I hope this is real (Score:3, Interesting)
Computers just keep getting slower. I'm afraid to see how slow a new dual-Opteron machine is.
Re:If this kind if thing is a concern (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it does. Killing a process from task manager is the same thing as kill -9. When the process dies it unconditionally releases all file handles, mutexes, and any other resources that it had open.
The only time that won't work is if the process is stuck in a system call somewhere (i.e. in the kernel). That usually means buggy device drivers which unfortunately are all too common in the Windows world. It could also be a bona-fide kernel bug, though those are fairly rare (but I do know of one way to cause a vfs lockup on any version of NT -- including fully patched 2k3 server -- without admin rights).
I see the same thing happen all the time on Linux. For example if a process is stuck trying to read a file that's on an nfs server that has become unreachable, not even kill -9 will get rid of it. Even *BSD sometimes gets unkillable processes in cases where the underlying hardware has gone to lunch. I see it sometimes with flaky CD burners, for example.
Re:To the OP - misunderstanding cameras, Doh! etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
About time we got back to the mid nineties. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yaawwnn (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If this kind if thing is a concern (Score:3, Interesting)
ROTFL.
Unix "kill -9" will terminate any process, regardless of the process' attempts to keep going. Windows task manager will kill almost any, but not all processes, most of the time. But when you really need it, it turns out you hit that "almost" part.
The difference is, in unix type systems, SIGTERM and SIGKILL are handled by the OS and the process is only informed of them (so it can try to shut down properly), in Windows, the process is being asked nicely to close. Windows process is free to ignore these events.
Thus it's quite easy to end up with unkillable process. Not to mention that some processes are considered system (or something) and task manager will refuse to kill them flat out. On Linux you can kill even init if you like (not a wise thing to do - but you can).
There is no unconditional forced kill in Windows. Even MS admits that.
How about apple instant wake? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Instant Startup Isn't All New (Score:4, Interesting)
The reality ain't so hot. In the meantime, your network connections have dropped. Your Kerberos ticket or domain login has expired. Your clock has drifted but your NTP client hasn't noticed that it hadn't been running in hours.
There's nothing earth shattering that can't be explicitly dealt with, but the problem is that there are a million and one little things that you'd never think of that have to be accounted for. It'd be like you waking up from a year-long coma, and realizing that you'd lost your job and your girlfriend even though it only felt like you'd been away for five minutes.
Lifetime shouldn't be an issue, in practice (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh... (Score:2, Interesting)
None the less, it's still a pretty neat concept, not to mention one that's been rather neglected. I wonder if this will become a big deal in the future. I hope it catches on with desktops soon, since this kind of thing could have a lot more applications than just fast loads. Moreover, I hope that software becomes available that could allow this to be done with existing flash devices. That'd be pretty nice, what with IDE flash registers and USB flash crud being available and all.
Re:I hope this is real (Score:1, Interesting)
Have you ever used a computer that used "real" core memory. ("Core" you know those little ferite dougnots threaded in wires.) It was not long ago, only in the 60's that all computers used core. Core memory is non-volitile. I remember unpacking a machine that was shipped cross contry and powering it up and the display (operator workstation for an air defence radar) still showed what was on it at power down. Software sill loaded and all.