Ubiquitous QuickBoot enables Android to be launched and restored to application execution state just in one second, the world’s fastest time

In recent years, the use of the Android and Linux for digital home electronics and mobile devices is on the rise as features become ever more complex. The time it takes for such devices to cold boot, however, can take more than a minute; this is something that manufacturer are working on to improve.

Ubiquitous QuickBoot is an independently developed solution based on a cutting edge technology that addresses such issues dramatically.

By preferentially restoring memory area necessary for booting system from nonvolatile storage to the RAM, the boot time has become overwhelmingly quick compared to other methods. In the implementation example of Android (*1), it has taken only one second (*2) to restore from the moment power is turned on to application execution state. This is the fastest in the world (*3) for booting Android. It should also be noted that instant booting is not dependent on the amount of memory being used by the application as the remaining memory areas are read sequentially only after booting thereby barely affecting user operations.

By utilizing this solution, manufacturers can develop digital home electronics and mobile devices with systems that can be instantly launched from near-zero standby power without compromising user operability.

Fig 1: The difference between hibernation and QuickBoot mechanisms

Fig.2: Relationship between system state memory size and boot time

Notes:

1. A mobile device platform offered by the Open Handset Alliance established by Google and others.
　　 Android is attracting increasing interest for use in a wide range of digital network devices in addition to mobile phones.

2. Measured by stopwatch using the following environment:

　・Android / Armadillo-500FX (Atmark Techno, Inc., with no hardware modification)

　・RAM size: 105 - 110 MB

　・RAM image size: 128 MB (uncompressed, no XIP)

　・Boot time from power-on to the following processes or operation-ready state:

　　GlobalTime Approx. 1.3 second boot time

　　GLSurfaceView Approx. 1.4 second boot time

　　AnimateDrawables Approx. 1.4 second boot time

3. As of November 2010 according to Ubiquitous Corporation research

(Reference) Existing technologies for speeding up launch time

Up until now, basically two different methods for speeding up the launch time of Linux have been attempted.

　・Speeding up through tuning

　・Speeding up by applying hibernation

Speeding up through tuning has been studied by Linux distributors, the Linux community and CELF among others. The Linux kernel alone has reached a level where it can be launched in approximately 500ms. The launch time of the application itself, however, has not been improved to a level that can meet expectations as the application continues to enlarge although some considerable improvements have been made with the development of technologies such as prelink and ReadAhead.

On the other hand, speeding up by applying hibernation is starting to get adopted in some devices. With this method, the system state deployed in the RAM during operation of application is stored in a nonvolatile storage medium such as a flash memory, and then restored to the RAM after turning on the power. This method, however, has a drawback in the sense that launch time is delayed due to the increase in time it takes to read and deploy the state from the storage to the RAM in proportion to the increase in memory space used by the system or application.