[SeaBIOS] Reducing SeaBIOS kernel entry time

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se> wrote:
> If you want to optimize for the Linux special case then you should
> not be using anything BIOS-related at all.

Good idea.  The 32-bit or 64-bit kernel entry point should be used
instead of the 16-bit entry point.

My reading of Linux Documentation/x86/boot.txt and arch/x86/boot/ is
that the 32-bit entry point bypasses the BIOS interrupts.  The loader
must provide the e820 map and edd info in the Linux boot_params
struct.

> Try coreboot with kernel as payload.

Coreboot does seem more appropriate than SeaBIOS if the BIOS interface
is avoided entirely.  The question is how much the 250 ms kernel entry
time that Paolo mentioned can be reduced...

Stefan