Accelerating Boot Time: Lessons from a New Platform
summary
Measures wall-clock boot with the ARM CNTVCT counter and serial capture (Grab Serial), runs 50+ samples, and adds early-kernel patches when needed to anchor pre-timer time. Finds a 1.4 s hidden co-processor startup gap and a counter that survives soft reboot requiring power-on reset. Builds a unified parser (boot time analysis tools), shrinks initramfs 82% (4.8s → <1s) with a minimized initrd, swaps to Android boot image to cut early boot ~90%, and drops end-to-end from 34s to 13s.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:03Why boot time matters
- 2:06Beyond systemd boot time
- 4:59Test setup challenges
- 7:25Baseline measurements
- 8:27Low-hanging boot optimizations
- 9:30Minimal initrd and Android image
- 10:53Observability gap in early boot
- 12:17Firmware processor time
- 13:01Applying platform optimizations
- 14:07Final results
- 16:13New platform challenges
- 17:21Q&A: KPI and vendor limits
- 18:30Q&A: Firmware and hardware
- 19:33Q&A: Customer hardware choices
- 20:15Q&A: Boot limits and suspend/resume
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