From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bill Gatliff Subject: Re: flicker free booting Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:42:35 -0500 Message-ID: <4A733B1B.2000009@billgatliff.com> References: <1243964577.4229.49.camel@mulgrave.int.hansenpartnership.com> <20090602175244.GB10973@cuplxvomd02.corp.sa.net> <20090602185143.GA8655@zod.rchland.ibm.com> <4A257DF0.6040607@am.sony.com> <1243975064.6342.10.camel@mulgrave.site> <20090602213452.GK32630@pengutronix.de> <20090603033535.GA24291@kroah.com> <20090731152617.GW29245@pengutronix.de> <20090731155352.GA29245@pengutronix.de> <20090731180309.GA17314@cuplxvomd02.corp.sa.net> <20090731180932.GC29245@pengutronix.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20090731180932.GC29245@pengutronix.de> Sender: linux-embedded-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Robert Schwebel Cc: David VomLehn , linux-embedded@vger.kernel.org, Juergen Beisert , Sascha Hauer , Wolfram Sang Robert Schwebel wrote: > >> 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. > Could your bootloader pre-initialize the graphics hardware to the same mode that the Linux driver will ultimately select, and then throw up a static graphic? That would give you some output until the driver itself comes online. And if the driver was in a demand-loaded module, then the static image wouldn't disappear until just before the application that does the animation was ready to start drawing. b.g. -- Bill Gatliff bgat@billgatliff.com