Hi. I just got myself an Atmel development kit for the 9263. I am doing some exploratory research, thus I installed a few demos on it: TimeSys LinuxLink, Linux4SAM, and the Adeneo WinCE demo.

Both Linux demos are quite slow to boot up, taking about one full minute. But the WinCE demo takes about 12 seconds. I am assuming all the demos are setup similarly, not fully optimized for booting times.

So, what boot times can I expect for Linux to have on the 9263? I will need a graphical interface, network, and USB functionality.

Is it possible to get it to boot in about 10 seconds or so...?

Thanks!

Carlos

you can try using a nor flash and execute-in-place teh kernel from norflash. Then you wouldnt be reading it from nor and puting in sdram. but 1 minute still seems long. Im running my own kernel and fs and starting a small fs in ram then mounting a larger one from nand. and this boots in about 15 seconds and I havent even tried it innor an di havent optomized boot time yet. Also the demo from timesys is using a gzipped fs unzipping from nand and palcing in sdram

Hi,
I never used TimeSys LinuxLink.
But I can say that our KaeilOS linux embedded system boots AT91SAM926x in approximately 15 seconds.

Hi,

It is sure that Linux demos are not optimized for fast boot time but are built for a full feature graphical experience : imagine :
- a complete GTK+ graphical library (like on your GNOME desktop)
- a good looking PDA desktop environment (GPE)
- a rw JFFS2 NAND file system for many MB storage
- automatic media mounting daemon (for SD cards, USB keys)
- a ssh server to access remotely (which generates a key at first booting)
- a web server
- a zero conf. daemon for network connexion
- a full set of peripheral drivers
- a very rich bootloader (u-boot) (already waits for 3 seconds to allow you to stop the linux booting)

Focusing on fast boot time needs work on several aspects :
- minimal bootloader
- well tailored linux kernel without unneeded drivers
- very tiny rootfs with only the bare minimum your application requires
- no PDA environment : only your graphical application
- graphical library chosen to suits embedded needs

Note however that Linux systems which need fast boot time, often put themselves into standby mode : so they can have an instant power on feature...

Thank you guys for the responses. I will get to optimizing linux, then!

On our custom board, we get approx 7 sec until the graphical app takes over.
The system boots from NOR flash (no dataflashboot needed);
the u-boot is built as minimal as possible, avoiding all unneccessary initializations, delays etc.
the root FS is mounted read-only directly from NOR flash (as minimal as possible)
data storage is mounted from microSD card later.
a custom application sitting on top of framebuffer (actually via a graphic rendering library, still).

When idle, the system goes to standby, where sd-ram is put into self-refresh etc. This gives very low power consumption (approx 10% when compared to idle system), so it can sit there for a long time - even if running on battery. Going into low-power standby takes approx 0,5 sec and coming back approx 1 sec.

hi guys,
i am a hardware engineer and I have recently purchased a 9263 kit out of my own interest. Now i wanted to run Linux/WinCE on it but I am unable to run either of them. I must be missing something important which is not well documented by atmel.
I have tried WinCE5, winCE6, Linux from Angstrom, Linux Demo which comes in CD, all of them...
I still could not get any of the OS running on my kit.
I hv purchased this kit from digikey two weeks back and the processor revision number is "A" on my kit.
thanks in advance

regards
anang