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FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

theregister.com

41–50 of 52 posts

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hmm, actually I’m not sure I even understand the whole “serverless” thing that much to be honest. A whole bunch of folks have given up on shared operating systems at a security, access control, data governance, and maintainability (reproducibility) level. At least if your goal is to create software for some purpose other than building server infrastructure. Some of them have decided that if you’re going to want thi…

So, why re-use a time sharing, multi-user OS to run your apps? Don't you just need a multi-core capable, POSIX environment? Arguably POSIX doesn't really matter anymore does it? It's Linux or it doesn't matter in a lot of cases (sadly). Seems like overkill. Sometimes optimal solutions are the available ones, sure, but is no one working on a POSIX exokernel "includeos" like thing?

Probably one or more people are working on that. But Linux and FreeBSD exist and have had a whole lot of testing hours put into them, both per se and to test various libraries and programs using them as their OS, so for now, that’s the safe option.

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#43
The headline has got a lot of asterisks. On a server that's already running, they can open a new software-only VM in 25ms. So it's more like saying they launch a new application in 25ms. It still sounds great though.

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if folks truly cared, it's possible to design a computer system to boot up, in a barebones fashion, and then do meaningful work and then transmit it, in under a millisecond?

I see you've never worked with microcontrollers.

Okay then link a microcontroller that can do that in under 1 milisecond?

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#46

Having a tough time understanding the impacts of this work. Fast boot times matter if you boot often. So what’s the use case here? Hmm, actually I’m not sure I even understand the whole “serverless” thing that much to be honest. Running FreeBSD as if it’s a “process” on Linux is interesting in a way but - who does this?

> So what’s the use case here? Spinning up additional "servers" in the cloud when you receive many incoming requests. If requests are held in a queue waiting for the new server to start, a fast boot process will reduce the latency for those requests. > Running FreeBSD as if it’s a “process” on Linux is interesting in a way but - who does this? Cloud providers run VMs of different customers on the same physical machin…

[deleted]

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#47
post #25

Seems to be a summary/rehash of https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/freebsd-fire... - which I guess came first, and is a better article.

I wrote the article.

Yes, it's a summary of that, overall, and I linked to that post in my article. That blog post is by the developer who did the work. Of course it came first: it is the source material!

Did you not even notice that I linked to it and recommended reading it?!

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#48
post #27

See, all those leetcodes practice finally pay off /s. All seriousness, this is for VM booting right? Not hardware booting.

I wrote the article.

(I did not write the headline.)

Primary sources are some HN threads, which I linked to, so I am surprised to see it here. That's why I didn't post it.

It's for one very specific VM with one very specific role, which I carefully explained in the article.

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you've never worked with microcontrollers.

Okay then link a microcontroller that can do that in under 1 milisecond?

A 6502 takes 7 cycles to execute the reset vector and run user code.

Of course the definition of "usable" work can be argued over but even a C64 released in the 80s will run your code in less then 10us

1ms is an enormous amount of time. I'm really curious why you would think otherwise

Re: FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

#50
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay then link a microcontroller that can do that in under 1 milisecond?

A 6502 takes 7 cycles to execute the reset vector and run user code. Of course the definition of "usable" work can be argued over but even a C64 released in the 80s will run your code in less then 10us 1ms is an enormous amount of time. I'm really curious why you would think otherwise

Because I understand electronics just enough to know that sending a usable signal in under a millisecond from cold is incredibly tough. That's barely enough time for voltages to stabilize in even quite high end systems.

Like I said link a microcontroller that can meet that. 'Usable work' can be as little as adding two half-precision floating point numbers together, and sending it can be any possible method.

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