What Contributes The Most To System Boot Time?

@thebigk • Oct 22, 2024

Oct 22, 2024

831

I've always thought of instant-on operating systems and it seems that we're still far away from having those on our computers and mobile phones. Windows 8 I heard, has a boot time of about 8 seconds; which is quite amazing; but it's still far from being 'Instant'. Even the modern mobile operating systems like iOS & Android can't be called instant on operating systems.

Pardon my limited knowledge of operating systems and computer hardware; I want to know what contributes the most to system boot time. I'm also interested in knowing whether we have practical / impractical ideas to reduce to so as to take a step towards instant on Operating Systems. Looking forward to well informed responses.

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Prasad Ajinkya

@prasad-aSUfhP • Jan 13, 2012

Wow, it's been a long time since I frequented the forums, and I can see so much change. Awesome improvements. CE, your web team rocks!! Enough of my ramblings ... though.

Here are my thoughts on the same -
When you boot a computer, the system first does a quick sanity check of the hardware, the BIOS to ensure that the machine is in operable conditions. You can skip this, but its not advised. These days this time has been reduced to almost negligible.

Then the system needs to know where are the core files of the operating system. These will then be loaded (i think these days, this is the bottleneck).

Once the core OS files are loaded, then the GUI loads. Finally giving access to the user to play around. 8 seconds is impressive indeed, but hey, its windows 😀

On a unrelated note, have you seen the Windows 8 BSOD? Its extremely abstract (simply gives the error code and nothing else. The color is still blue though.)

If you do want to save time, I think you can save the time time taken to load all OS files by putting them on a separate memory location which is faster than your hard-drive (ala L1/L2 cache). It's a crazy idea, but hey, thats why I am here!
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Kaustubh Katdare

@thebigk • Jan 13, 2012

Good to see you back. I'm yet to check the Windows 8 BSOD. What I'm thinking (just a crazy thought) that it's actually the RAM & HDD R/W speeds that eventually contribute to the system load time. Is that true? Has anyone had a chance to experience how SSDs stored operating systems load?

But that would mean our phones should boot instantly. Does not happen. 😨
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Prasad Ajinkya

@prasad-aSUfhP • Jan 13, 2012

Biggie, thats precisely what I am saying. If you put your OS files in a faster memory, then the load times will go down.

Which is interesting, because each OS has different native file systems (inode tables for unix-based, fat32 and ntfs for windows).
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PraveenKumar Purushothaman

@praveenkumar-66Ze92 • Jan 16, 2012

Few things which contribute to the boot time:
1. HDD R/W Speed
2. Prefetch Content
3. RAM Paged Memory
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Kaustubh Katdare

@thebigk • Jan 16, 2012

Is there an evidence of SSD based storages make the systems boot faster? Has anyone done an experiment?
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PraveenKumar Purushothaman

@praveenkumar-66Ze92 • Jan 16, 2012

The_Big_K
Is there an evidence of SSD based storages make the systems boot faster? Has anyone done an experiment?
Yup!!! Try MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro, you can see awesome difference, when you run Microsoft Office 2011! 😀 Air starts it too fast and it uses SSD! 😀
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Kaustubh Katdare

@thebigk • Jan 16, 2012

Praveen-Kumar
Yup!!! Try MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro, you can see awesome difference, when you run Microsoft Office 2011! 😀 Air starts it too fast and it uses SSD! 😀
What's the average boot time on Air? I often get surprized to see the difference between OSX devices and Windows based PCS. OSX seems to be at least 3x faster than Windows running on similar hardware. I think OS too contributes to the boot time.

But the question I asked originally remains unanswered - what can be done to improve the boot time? Say on the OS & Hardware level?
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PraveenKumar Purushothaman

@praveenkumar-66Ze92 • Jan 16, 2012

The_Big_K
But the question I asked originally remains unanswered - what can be done to improve the boot time? Say on the OS & Hardware level?
Simple answer:
1. Increase Processor ClockSpeed.
2. Increase the RAM Memory!
But these two seem stupid and too literal...

In OS Level, they can optimize the function calls and stuff... 😀
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Kaustubh Katdare

@thebigk • Jan 16, 2012

Would like to hear more opinions on this.
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