New Chromebooks boot in 5 seconds thanks to open source BIOS

So-called “instant on” options have yet to become truly instant, but we’re getting closer. An updated Samsung Chromebook that was just shown off at IDF in Beijing, for example, can perform a cold boot in just five seconds. You’ve still got to log in after that to get at your Chrome OS desktop, of course, but it’s still a pretty impressive feat.

Current generation Chromebooks like the Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700 take around eight or nine seconds to boot. Thanks to this new model’s updated processor (thought to be a Sandy Bridge chip) and a lot of time spent tweaking Coreboot, a Linux-based replacement for the proprietary BIOS options from companies like Award and AMI, there’s almost no need to bother with sleep states on Chromebooks any more.

The prototype here closely resembles a unit that Samsung had on display at CES 2012, which was running a dual-core Celeron chip — a healthy upgrade over the original Series 5, which sported a slightly underwhelming Atom N570 chip clocked at 1.66GHz.

Google recently introduced an impressive software renderer in Chrome that helped to alleviate some of the performance issues, but with that new Aura interface turning Chrome OS into a more full-featured operating system, new Chromebooks stand to benefit greatly from an upgrade in horsepower.

Google’s not the only company focused on imperceptible boot times, of course. About a year ago, Microsoft showed off an HP laptop that reached the Metro desktop in just eight seconds from a powered-down state. Nobody likes to wait, and fortunately everyone developing operating systems seems determined to make sure we don’t have to when it comes to using our computers.

Source : geek

Posted in: Computers,News,OS