Hello, I have a suggestion for a kernel framework which aims to reduce boot time in embedded devices and would be interested in hearing your feedback. A large portion of kernel boot time is spent in driver probe functions often waiting for hardware for example calculating LPJ values or trying to determine what type of camera is connected (PAL/NTSC) etc. However for most embedded devices the hardware remains constant and these probes always determine the same information. Therefore boot time can be decreased by removing some of this probe code and replacing it with known values. To some extent some of these optimisations have already been done through a variety of methods - for example the LPJ calculation can be bypassed with the lpj= parameter and some drivers have their own methods. My solution aims to generalise these solutions... The solution is to provide a very simple framework which will allow drivers to identify and record such values (LPJ, camera type, decoder chip version) during boot. Once booted the user can obtain a collection of these values and pass them back to the kernel on subsequent boots. During subsequent boots - drivers upon realising these values have already been provided can bypass some of their probe code and thus reducing boot time. Taking advantage of this framework would be very trivial for drivers. I wanted to see your views on the overall solution prior to considering how it could be implemented. Thanks, Andrew Murray -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
