And it still crawls to boot.
I don't know why, but my suspicion is that the Broadcom hardware is seriously gimped by being closed source.
Seriously, just open source stuff already, and let us do the development for you!
I don't know why, but my suspicion is that the Broadcom hardware is seriously gimped by being closed source.
Seriously, just open source stuff already, and let us do the development for you!
They're already testing the waters of in-house silicon with the RP2040, an in-house Linux SoC would be the next step
Realistically a Pi Linux SoC would probably be more open than Broadcom hardware, but not completely open. IP blocks they license from 3rd parties (e.g. the GPU) may still have NDA strings attached, and the wireless firmware would still need to be an untinkerable black box to get regulatory approval.
It would still be a step up from Broadcom who won't give you anything until you sign an NDA and commit to buying 10 million units and offer up your firstborn child.
I just measured, and my M1 MacBook Air takes 32 seconds to boot to the unlock screen, and then a further 8 seconds after the password is entered before it reaches the desktop. As I'm sure you're aware, the M1 processor is no slouch, and Apple includes an NVMe SSD with respectable (though not mind blowing) performance in this laptop.
NVMe absolutely screams for data transfer rates. And according to these tests, using NVMe adds 30 ms to the boot process.
Something is wrong.
Really disagree. Loading a few megabytes of kernel would take way less than a second even on microSD. eMMC can be noticeably faster, yet you’re still saying it takes 6 seconds on your eMMC BeagleBoard.
Hardware initialization takes time.
Can it be faster? Probably, but you haven’t provided a compelling example by referencing the BeagleBoard being one second faster.
7.7 seconds isn’t mind blowing, but it’s not crawling. It’s more than adequate here.
If they optimize it more in the future... cool.
If you want open systems, the upcoming RISC-V SBC revolution seems likely to be much friendlier than Broadcom, but the Pi is already more open than most ARM platforms, in my opinion.