[SeaBIOS] [PATCH v2] qemu: fast boot when linuxboot optionrom is used

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 03:16:39PM +0100, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 3:38 PM Kevin O'Connor <kevin at koconnor.net> wrote:
> > It would be good to understand what the source of the delay is.  It
> > might be possible to avoid the delay without adding a new config
> > setting.  For example, the patch above will prevent the vga rom from
> > being run, but it should be possible to accomplish the same with
> > "-device VGA,romfile=".  The other change this patch makes is to skip
> > device_hardware_setup() - is it known which items in that function add
> > to the delay?
> 
> Hi Kevin,
> thanks for your advice.
> 
> I tried to understand what are the sources of the delay, and I found
> that most of the time is spent because of QEMU default devices (eg
> e1000 ROM PCI, mouse, keyboard, etc)
> At this point, (without the patch above) I disabled the default QEMU
> devices (-nodefaults) and I reached 12.5 ms of SeaBIOS boot time
> (compared to 22 ms, where 4 ms is taken by the loading of e1000 ROM).
> 
> Other 2 ms is taken by enable_vga_console(), where simply comment out
> the printf("SeaBIOS (version %s)\n", VERSION) I reached 10.7 ms of
> boot time.
> Do you think is acceptable to use dprintf(1, ...) instead of printf()?
> Or maybe check if we found the VGA.

Interesting.  I tracked down this printf delay - it's due to the
save/restore of cpu state when thunking to 16bit mode.  (For every
character displayed on the screen the code enters 16bit mode to invoke
the vgabios and it saves/restores the cr0, gdt, fs, gs, a20, nmi
states during that process.)  It's trivial to eliminate the calls when
there is no vgabios though (see patch below).

> Note: All these tests are done with CONFIG_DEBUG_LEVEL=0, using
> CONFIG_DEBUG_LEVEL=1 the boot time grows up to 24 ms, maybe we should
> put CONFIG_DEBUG_LEVEL=0 in the SeaBIOS configuration used in QEMU.

I think the main seabios binary should have CONFIG_DEBUG_LEVEL=1 as it
helps with debug reports.  I suppose an additional binary could be
made for those looking for the fastest possible speed.  (The sole cost
of the debugging is the additional hardware accesses that results from
those debug messages.)

> > Also, what is the target boot time that is considered acceptable?
> 
> I'm using qboot as a reference (6/7 ms). It is very minimal, so 10 ms
> I think is considered acceptable for SeaBIOS

Thanks,
-Kevin


--- a/src/output.c
+++ b/src/output.c
@@ -74,6 +74,9 @@ static struct putcinfo debuginfo = { debug_putc };
 static void
 screenc(char c)
 {
+    if (!MODESEGMENT && GET_IVT(0x10).segoff == FUNC16(entry_10).segoff)
+        // No need to thunk to 16bit mode if vgabios is not present
+        return;
     struct bregs br;
     memset(&br, 0, sizeof(br));
     br.flags = F_IF;