[SeaBIOS] [RFC 0/3] NVDIMM booting support

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 03:14:04PM +0200, Marc Marí wrote:
> Implement support for booting from a PMEM region compatible with NVDIMM and
> NFIT specifications.
> 
> The current implementation is still slow. When running a Linux guest on top of
> QEMU in x86:
> 
> Using actual -kernel option:
> QEMU startup time: .080
> BIOS startup time: .060
> Kernel setup time: .590
> Total time: .730
> 
> Using -kernel option and fw_cfg DMA patch:
> QEMU startup time: .080
> BIOS startup time: .039
> Kernel setup time: .002
> Total time: .121
> 
> Using this patch series and adding the vmlinuz as a NVDIMM device:
> QEMU startup time: .080
> BIOS startup time: .065
> Kernel setup time: .015
> Total time: .160

Thanks Marc - very interesting!

Do you think NVDIMM support will ultimately be faster than DMA or are
there other advantages to using NVDIMMs?

-Kevin