Hi,
The command line I used is:
x86_64-softmmu/qemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm \ -kernel /boot/vmlinuz-4.0.7-300.fc22.x86_64 \ -L pc-bios/optionrom/ \ -bios roms/seabios/out/bios.bin -nographic
Thanks. One thing that immediately pops up is that even though "-nographic" is used, it looks like QEMU still emulates a VGA device and that device has an option rom that takes several milliseconds to init the display hardware. Adding "-device VGA,romfile=" to the qemu command line will further reduce the boot time by avoiding this hardware init delay.
Same goes for the NIC btw.
cheers, Gerd