MontaVista Linux Achieves 1-Second Boot

A Linux operating system boots 15 times faster that Windows 7 can in ideal lab conditions. MontaVista Linux, an operating system designed for embedded industrial applications, can boot in just one second. By contrast, Microsoft said in September 2008 that, in the lab, a very good system running Windows 7 was capable of booting in under 15 seconds. At the bottom of this article, you will be able to find an embedded video with the MontaVista Linux one-second boot in the spotlight. The demonstration comes from the Virtual Freescale Technology Forum and features a sample dashboard application that is operational at just one second after the cold boot.

"The achievement of one second boot from cold power to operational status is a breakthrough in embedded Linux performance," Jim Ready, CTO of MontaVista Software, revealed. "It's always been thought that embedded Linux could never perform at this level of speed and efficiency. We're proud to be the first embedded Linux vendor to achieve and demonstrate this demanding level of performance."

Of course it's in no way fair to compare a fully fledged operating system like Windows 7 with an embedded platform such as MontaVista Linux. Windows 7 surpassed an embedded OS by any standards, in terms of the volume of drivers, processes and services that it needed to launch in order to become fully operational. Still, with its next iteration of the Windows client, Microsoft managed to considerably increase the boot performance of the operating system, compared with Windows Vista, as the company demonstrated.

"The increase in control processing requirements, more sophisticated data communications and algorithmic processing requires greater interaction between processors and operating systems," Bruno Baylac, global director of industrial marketing at Freescale Semiconductor, added. "MontaVista's achievement of one second Linux boot time on Freescale processors based on Power Architecture technology is a significant achievement. Industrial embedded real-time applications will see immediate benefits from this capability enabled by MontaVista Linux."