First great looking product you have going here. It's about time that someone made their own motherboard platform with an X86 cpu. The question I have is this: is it possible to have a bios version that can be used to decrease the boot up time of the overall process when loading windows 8.1/10? I am fully aware that current windows 8.1/10 boot pretty quickly. However, in an automotive environment every second that can be trimmed off loading windows the better. I am hoping that something like this would be an option since your hardware is open source and therefore has its own way of loading bios without any of the "normal" bios companies (American Megatrends, Award, Phoenix, etc..) locked down versions that ship with 99.9% of all the PCs and laptops today. If modified bios can "not load/disable or delay" peripherals that really are not needed then that just shaves precious seconds off the boot time. I'd like to get the boot time down to 3-5 seconds from a cold boot to a windows program starting. That would more line up to what the Android load is currently on a slower tablet that the x86 so these times shouldn't be out of scope to achieve. Just imagine that once the pc has power, about 5 seconds after that you start to hear the pc start playing the HD Radio part of your program...
It uses UEFI (the modern replacement for BIOS) and has an extremely fast boot. You also have the option of booting into the EFI shell and having scripts automatically run. Might be able to shave some time off via custom scripts - Not that there's much time to save See this update demonstrating boot speed into Yocto - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/udoo/udoo-x86-the-most-powerful-maker-board-ever/posts/1575834
Thanks for the reply, Laura! However, the demo of Yocto is Linux and not Windows 8.1. Most all of Linux distros are really quick to boot unlike Windows. If they could post a video like that but showing windows 8.1/10 booting that quickly then I can believe it. The video description also seems not to provide the detail on what version of the Udd x86 motherboard. Did it show the boot using 2GB RAM? 4GB RAM? 8GB RAM? Did it use the Intel Quad Core X5-E8000 or the N3160 CPU or the Intel Pentium N3710 Quad Core CPU? Was it loaded on a M.2 SSD? On the 8GB eMMC? The SATA connection? The Micro SD card? A more detailed document showing how the UEFI works would also be nice to developers looking to use this motherboard.
See: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/udoo/udoo-x86-the-most-powerful-maker-board-ever/posts/1560752 They load Windows 10 from the Windows bootloader, so it should give you a good idea of how quick it loads. See: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/udoo/udoo-x86-the-most-powerful-maker-board-ever/posts/1560285 I believe all the demos are from the X86 Advanced board.
Thanks again Laura for taking the time to reply. Would it be possible for them to do a cold boot straight to the desktop without needing to (1) select what os starts <aka no dual boot> and (2) without needing to type a password to get access to the desktop. If the UEFI can be customized to not check ram, show a boot screen or a splash screen then that would be a good start .
Might be worth messaging them directly, using the contact option on the Kickstarter project page for the UDOO X86. The boot speed is quick, and you could even make the X86 pre-emptively boot up if you wish, by hooking the Arduino 101 into a cars CAN bus (using a shield designed for that purpose) and listening out for the key fob unlocking the car doors. Another method might be to listen out for a BLE signal from the users mobile phone, and turning on the X86 when the signal is within a certain range.
I voted "Nah". IMO, the last thing we need is to introduce scope creep into any level of the software since software development is likely the most difficult part of the project to keep on schedule. @Laura, I agree the boot time already appears to be quite robust and since the hardware components are relatively rigid it should stay that way when the UDOO X86 product is completed. Note: There is a "Fast Startup" option in Win10 that will give you a very fast system restart (even faster than "hibernate") if you don't use dual-boot; and various fast boot options in most UEFI systems. This article may be of interest: http://www.howtogeek.com/243901/the-pros-and-cons-of-windows-10s-fast-startup-mode/
As you can read on YouTube we used the Advanced demo board, as with all the other Kickstarter videos of UDOO X86. Yocto was running on eMMC. On M.2 SSD should be even faster.
Hello TGD1999, this is exactly what I would love to achieve too. My intention is to use UDOO x86 as a platform for rapid prototyping of instrument cluster UI's. Engineers tend to use Yocto for that, since on a board like the first UDOO iMX.6 it can complete a cold boot to UI loaded within 3500ms. I'm no software engineer, and simply don't have time to dig too deep in the low end stuff. I can forgo boot time, but 24000ms to get the UI to load in Windows 10 is far too long to be practical, even in a test environment. Will keep a close eye on this thread
@Laura Do you have a list of BIOS settings for achieving the shortest BIOS/UEFI load times? Right now with Ubuntu 16.04 server systemd-analyze says: Startup finished in 3.112s (firmware) + 4.319s (loader) + 4.940s (kernel) + 1.555s (userspace) = 13.928s Why is UEFI firmware taking more than 3 seconds, how can I reduce that? I'll see how I can reduce grub loader time.
@spctm Unfortunately, I do not have a list of the optimal settings, as I've not reached the stage of writing the EFI shell script. This is something that I will be working on achieving soon, so will let you know what I discover Did you find out anything in relation to the grub loader?
I remember with Win7 you could tailor it to strip heaps of things outta the OS so it ran as a bare minimum to not only reduce the size but also speed up the OS considerably. might be an option as a test case? could possibly use the same kinda tools to tailor Win8 or Win10? What about running a Windows 10 IoT install? https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/Explore/IoTCore Funnily enough I was only thinking this arvo on the way home from work about what we could achieve with the Udoo x86 in a vehicle. Things like bluetooth dashcams (running power off the car's circuits maybe?) linked to the x86 possibly under the seat or in the boot to record all data quietly (and also stream movies or TV to a display at the same time)
@Laura My apologies for not replying promptly. I was able get grub loader to load within a second. However, all of a sudden my board does not boot up anymore. It was running fine and when I rebooted it would go into a continuous reset loop. I tried removing all attached devices and even connected a high-end 12v 10A power supply but no luck. I have filed a ticket. Until I can get the board up and running again I cannot make any further progress. Hopefully I can get this resolved soon. Let me know what you find with regards to UEFI optimization.
