[SeaBIOS] [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 00/12] Guest startup time optimization

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> > AFAIK latest seabios already supports DMA.
> > It's easy to add more config options for seabios
> > if you are so inclined.
> 
> Yes, I tried that, the fw_cfg overhead in SeaBios/linuxboot optrom is
> already not a big issue for us. However, there are still some other
> code in SeaBIOS needs to be investigated.

What exactly?

Also a few suggestions:
 * Try the seabios master branch.  There have been some improvements
   recently which are not in the 1.9 release.
 * Use a stripped down config.  When booting a kernel directly you
   don't need storage and usb drivers, also no keyboard.  That all
   reduces init time.
 * Initializing all pci devices (placing bars in address space and
   programming them) can probably be skipped and left to the linux
   kernel to handle.  But when trying take care that the effect might
   be that we shift just startup time from seabios to linux kernel,
   the placement needs to happen somewhere after all.
 * When discussing these things add the seabios list
   (seabios at seabios.org) to cc:  Added the list now.

cheers,
  Gerd