[SeaBIOS] Reducing SeaBIOS kernel entry time

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Fri, Jul 03, 2015 at 10:33:56AM +0100, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> Hi,
> qboot (https://github.com/bonzini/qboot) is a stripped down firmware
> providing only what is needed to boot a Linux kernel on x86.  I wonder
> if there is room to achieve similar results with SeaBIOS for the
> lightweight virtual machine use case.
> 
> The goal is to enter the kernel within 20 milliseconds.  (That's the
> number I measured with qboot.)
> 
> Kevin: Have you looked at SeaBIOS startup time and do you think this
> use case is within the scope of what SeaBIOS is intended for?
> 
> Marc is beginning to profile boot times and any pointers would be helpful.

Hi Stefan,

I took a look a month or so ago:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.kvm.devel/136207

Last test I ran I had SeaBIOS down to 16ms (not including the time to
deploy or jump to the linux kernel).  More reductions are also
possible - the above was just with Kconfig settings.

Let me know if you want more info on how I did that.

-Kevin