Re: flicker free booting

[Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel@pengutronix.de>]

Hi David,

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:03:10AM -0700, David VomLehn wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 05:53:52PM +0200, Robert Schwebel wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 08:35:35PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 11:34:52PM +0200, Robert Schwebel wrote:
> > > > Could flickerfree-bootsplash be a topic? Or is that completely
> > > > pushed into the userspace these fastboot days?
> ...
> > So what I would like to see is this:
> > 
> > a) power on
> > b) almost immediately (< 1s) a splash screen appears
> > c) optionally be able to do some animation, progress bar etc
> > d) application appears (instantanously or by fading)
> 
> This is an issue that I think is common to many embedded platforms, but I'm
> not sure this is the solution. (I'm not sure it's *not* the solution, either).

I hope it is more a call-for-discussion :-)

> The question I've been looking at is: do sub-second boot times make
> all this a moot point? After all, if you can bring up your graphics
> driver in a fraction of a second and use *it* to display a splash
> screen, it seems like it would meet your need to give almost immediate
> feedback to users that the system is alive.

Yup, that would be cool.

However, on flash-based systems in the ARM926 / 200...400 MHz class
(which is still quite common) the boot time up to the point where the
penguin appears is still about 3...4 s [1] which is too long. So I
suspect until systems become faster, we'll have no other choice than
such as scenario.

rsc

[1] we can do some benchmarking next week
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