We built a cloud GPU notebook that boots in seconds | Hacker News Reader

We built a cloud GPU notebook that boots in seconds

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91 pointsbirdculture34 comments

I remember visiting a computer exhibition (CeBIT) in the very early 90s. In one booth they had some of the big Amiga systems (2000, I think) and at some point on of the booth's staff did the 3 finger salute (press 3 specific keys on the keyboard to force a reboot) on one of the machines. The machine was back up in what felt like an instant. I was amazed by that. They probably had setup the whole boot process via RAM (see "RAD" disk on the Amiga), but I hadn't any idea about that back in the days.

Still to this day I think this is how it should be. You want to switch ON your computer and it should be ready for use.

But what do we get? What feels like minutes of random waiting time. My Raspberry PI with Linux which probably eats 10 of those Amiga 2Ks for breakfast shifts through through a few 1000 lines of initialising output… my Mac which probably eats like 50 of those Amiga 2Ks for lunch… showing a slowly growing bar doing whatever… Why didn't this improve at all in the last 30 years?

Because we still carry data over coppers and wires.

Windows prioritize phoning home and data collection over UX. If you have a corporate install you’ll also have negligent EDP software killing your boot times.

You can get fast boot times on linux if you care to tweak things.

> They probably had setup the whole boot process via RAM (see "RAD" disk on the Amiga), but I hadn't any idea about that back in the days.

> Still to this day I think this is how it should be. You want to switch ON your computer and it should be ready for use.

Don't we already kind of have this? It's setup to be dynamic, and we'd ended up calling it "sleep", but it basically does what you're talking about, but dynamically and optionally, basically chucking the entire state into RAM (or disk for "hibernate") then resumes from that when you wanna continue.

Personally I've avoided it for the longest of times because something always breaks or ends up wonky when you resumes, at least on my desktop. The PS5 and the Steam Deck handles this seemingly even with games running, so seems possible, and I know others who are using it, maybe Linux desktop is just lagging behind there a bit so I continue to properly shut down my computer every night.

Macs on the other hand are extremely stable. In my 4 years of using my MacBook Pro M1 Max, I’ve only restarted during OS updates. There were maybe a handful instances where it froze and I forced restart. Other than that, I only put it to sleep every time and it works like a charm. I use it for heavy duty software development and experimentation with local models, so it’s even more surprising!

The hardware Apple makes is incredible, bar none, which is why is such a shame the OS and application UX is absolutely horrible and continues to get worse with each iteration. If Apple would publicly support Linux efforts on Apple hardware I'd probably switch back in an instant. But until then, I guess I'll continue turning off my desktop at night, and waiting a whole of 15 seconds for the startup in the morning oh the horrors.

Really? I tend to reboot a lot. OBS, monitors, USB hub all trend to flake out after a few days of sleeping.

I'm using an M4 Macbook right now and I constantly have issues with USB devices (especially hubs) failing to work properly after sleep. Its very unpredictable too, I can't seem to make it happen.

Its actually kind of funny, because while people talk about how unreliable Bluetooth is, moving a few of those devices from USB to Bluetooth (like my trackball mouse) made the situation far more reliable. Sleep has been that bad.

I have used Windows hibernate since Windows XP and never had an issue with devices after resuming Windows. Within recent years on Windows 10 I have gone months without a restart, only hibernating my pc. In the early days I used a custom built pc. In the later years(post 2005) I have only used laptops, mostly Dells with a sprinkling of Lenovos; if that matters.

I don't know why Windows now hides it from the power menu by default now.

I think it's mostly us with lots of external gear (mostly audio related) that things get a bit wonky, and if you're running graphic-heavy applications that you're trying to resume at the same time. For example, Ableton for the longest of times couldn't handle resuming from hibernation for me, seems to work today (Windows 11), but still having the same issue with a running Houdini window, resuming from hibernation does something with the communication with the GPU (my hunch) and the window freezes when resuming.

It's the OS. About 10 years ago, I had an Asus EeePC, which was an underpowered piece of trash with a 32 bit Intel Atom CPU, but it cold-booted in less than 3 seconds. And by "booted", I mean completely booted, i.e. not like Android, where you have to wait a few more minutes until all the background services settle and the UI stops lagging.

Unfortunately, the MeGoo OS was discontinued shortly after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo

I still use my Eeepc.

Mine broke after a decade, or I would use it too I think. Just so neat to bring everywhere, I even got used to code on that thing. Albeit it was the later model with more normal keys, the original 701 was not great to type on, not because of the size (I got used to it) but it was something about the layout which was weird.

Because a modern OS is much higher fidelity and there’s limits to how fast all those components can load.

You may not care about the newer features , or think you don’t at the least, but there’s a limit to how fast they can be loaded.

More than just loaded, they’re also often checked for integrity as well.

Just curious, was something like https://github.com/containerd/stargz-snapshotter considered/evaluated before designing your own lazily-loaded container FS and if so, any pros/cons for the same?

Also curious! I was also wondering if criu frozen containers would help here. I.e. load the notebooks, snapshot them, and then restore them.

This is notoriously hard when you start to involve GPUs

When did booting time has become a problem to solve?

From my (just a user) perspective, GPUs are expensive, they shouldn't be left standing if they're not being used.

I was there Gandalf, 3000 years ago, when people used folding@home to donate idle CPUs.

and SETI@home too!

> From my (just a user) perspective, GPUs are expensive, they shouldn't be left standing if they're not being used.

How much does a idling GPU actually take when there is no monitor attached and no activity on it? My monitor turns off after 10 minutes of inactivity or something, and at that point, I feel like the power draw should be really small (but haven't verified it myself).

I honestly can’t believe that the only top level comment right now is this kind of “I can’t be assed to read the linked article, I came just to shit on it” kinda comment

When did low-effort comments become acceptable here?

The problem to solve is low cost, secure multitenancy.

Seconds ... how many?

I remember reading that if a webpage takes more than 4 seconds to load, 50% of users will have closed the page.

> Seconds ... how many?

Right? Any process that eventually completes successfully takes seconds, even if it's a million of them.

> Right? Any process that eventually completes successfully takes seconds, even if it's a million of them.

Nadella, is that you ? /s

This looks awesome!

is this the fruits of the jamsocket deal?

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