Faster Boot up

[GZ_Dan]

I was thinking about the fast boot time, and thought perhaps it could
be quicker. If Chrome OS is going to be run on a Netbook by Google,
and the system is intended to just host Chrome OS, why not organise
the boot loader so that the components info loads from a simple read-
only file, as well as the OS itself, and store it on ROM, like the
backup ROM to revert BIOS's in devices to default values. The user
data and any new software could load from the SSD inside the Netbook.

Just a thought is all. I know that installing updates could be
affected, but after the beta testing and the stable version is
released, what more does an internet browser need?

[David Hendricks]

Because ROM is ssslllllooooowwww. Reading 4MB worth of content off the Cr-48 x86 firmware ROM takes about 5 seconds. It's also pretty cramped, with 4-8MB being considered large for SPI ROMs.

The idea isn't bad, though -- LinuxBIOS (which is now Coreboot) was created largely for that purpose. We'd cram everything we could, including a Linux kernel and a "phase 1" system image which would load the "phase 2" image from over the network. Getting rid of the HDDs of the increased reliability by a huge factor, especially in clustering/HPC apps where taking a node down could bring everything to a screeching halt.