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Geek Culture / Using hibernation data for a super-soft reboot?

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adr
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 11:37 Edited at: 13th Jun 2006 11:37
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I had an idea yesterday for a new kind of reboot. Unfortunately, WindowsXP boots so fast nowadays there really isn't much call for it.

My understanding is that when you suspend your machine, it writes out the contents of your memory to disk. When you power the machine backup, it reloads that file back into memory and hey presto, your machine is back as if you never turned it off.

Why not take an image straight after a successful boot, and then "reboot" back to that image?

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Nicholas Thompson
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 15:58
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@adr: I'm not 100% sure but that sounds UNCANNILY like what Hibernate does already... You may notice in your Power Settings that hibernate requires EXACTLY the same amount of hard disk space as you have free memory (Free Memory = Total RAM - any used for graphics, sound, etc).

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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 16:12
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He means that a hardware reboot uses hibernate data from a clean boot. You could still hibernate, and upon power up would use the new memory image.

It's a good idea, just much more subject to problems when used as a static solution. I've read about it being done with some type of tablet or handheld computer, I just can't remember what.


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Kenjar
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 17:51 Edited at: 13th Jun 2006 17:52
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I've had the same idea before, but expanded on it a bit.

My vision for the next generation Operating system is this:

A Windows Vista PCI Express card. Remember the old Atari ST's and previous machines with GUI's liske TOS? The whole operating system was stored in read only memory, and loaded directly from the chip. With my amazing, yet imaginary, Windows Vista PCI card, you'd have a few DDR2 chips, and a battery attached, you could install your operating system to a virtual hard drive on the PCI board, allowing windows to setup it's hardware requirements. This means no slow hard drive loading times, but much faster memory data transfer rates. Add enough space and you could even have virtual memory on the board, because that's how windows works. The card would not replace the hard disk drive obviousally, you'd still install programs and save data to it. But you Operating System would be being loaded from the virtual hard drive, with data transfere rates compariable with video cards. That is Gigabytes a second rather then Megabytes a second. Alot of PC's these days have more then one PCI-Express slot x4 and a few even have a couple of x16 slots. Imagin what that would do for boot and reload times.

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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 17:56
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I'd buy something like that, if the price wasn't crazy. It would be like PhysX, but like WinX.


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Kenjar
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 17:59
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you can buy something like it from Gigabyte, the code is, GC-RAMDISK. The problem with it is that it still operates through the SATA-150 interface, so the fastest speed you could get is 150MB/s. Still faster then any hard disk mind you. My vision is for a card that operates directly through the PCI Slot itself for maximum bandwidth.

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David T
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 19:18 Edited at: 13th Jun 2006 19:19
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I think the idea of reboot is to actively reload and reset everything, not simply get back to a 'clean slate'.

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Three Score
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 19:29
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only problem I see with that is updating the OS would be a pain, and maybe the fact most OS's like to write stuff to themselves(like dynamicly written stuff) but with some adaptation it should work


@original post
I didn't really understand it all but the only problem I can see is if you changed something in the startup stuff(like drivers) and then rebooted(super-softly or whatever) because then it would be like you didn't install it

and just for the record you save more than just memory in hibernation, you also save stuff like registers and possibly state information for devices

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SirFire
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 19:29 Edited at: 13th Jun 2006 19:31
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@Kenjar

That's a great idea, except for the fact that at the rate MS releases patches, updates, and hotfixes, the card would be obsolete in 3 days. Perhaps if it was flashable, then maybe.

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the_winch
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 19:30
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Quote: "Why not take an image straight after a successful boot, and then "reboot" back to that image?"


I imagine it could do some pretty wierd things if you happend to change system componants between reboots.

By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike squeak that was indeed bothersome.
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Kenjar
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Posted: 13th Jun 2006 23:49
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Quote: "That's a great idea, except for the fact that at the rate MS releases patches, updates, and hotfixes, the card would be obsolete in 3 days. Perhaps if it was flashable, then maybe."


The ROM would have to be flashable. However I was thinking more along the lines of something like the RAMDRIVE from gigabyte, but as I said rather then being connected via the SATA or IDE cables, it would be a direct PCI interface, increasing the potential bootup times from 2 seconds to miliseconds.

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adr
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 00:00 Edited at: 14th Jun 2006 00:00
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I think some of you have misunderstood me. I'm not trying to replace hard or soft reboots, just provide a shortcut. Imagine the following situation:

I've just been doing some DBPro development, 2D in the GIMP, 3D in Wings, web browsing using MSIE ... all the time, various libraries are getting loaded or cached by the WinXP kernel. Perhaps some poorly written apps haven't fully released allocated memory.

Imagine a utility which when executed used a hibernation image to "flush" your session. In a fraction of the time it takes to do a full reboot, your machine is back to a freshly booted state. You haven't reloaded the whole OS (as you would with a reboot) you've just done whatever jiggery pokery it is that hibernation resumption does.

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Kenjar
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 00:02
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Nothing loaded from a hard disk drive will beat anything loaded directly from RAM.

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adr
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 00:43
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Quote: "Nothing loaded from a hard disk drive will beat anything loaded directly from RAM."

This week's contribution from the department of "point out the bleedin' obvious".

To answer your earlier post, you can get yourself closer to that solution. From what I can remember, you can get SATA adapters (or RAID adapters... can't remember which) which just take straight DDR memory. The device presents itself as a logical drive to the O/S and you can put anything on there that you want. Naturally, because it's just RAM, it disappears when it loses power... Perhaps if it was a RAID adapter it could mirror its contents lazily to give you some sort of persistence? I dunno - I can't remember the specifics, but I'll see if I can find more out about it.

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indi
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 01:00
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bring back the RAMDISK with protective memory allocation to the storage device like the hard drive.

Im going to look at ram disks again after this post, I used to play with them years ago but ram was so expensive.

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Kenjar
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 01:01
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I've already stated the manufacturer and name of the device you're talking about. Gigabyte, the manufactures code being GA-RAMDISK for around £80, not including RAM, supports up to 8 Gb which is enough for XP and 2000. There is also another one but it's very expensive, http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/ it is a 16Gb model, but the drawback to both these cards is that they connect via triditional IDE and SATA, which limiting the maximum data rate to those interfaces. A direct interface to a PCI-Express port would massively increase the data throughput.

Quote: "maybe it is possible then, lets see if you can have a go making it then , be good if you can "


As with all design processes, I need the capital to fund developement. My own electronic skills are rusty at best. There is little chance for single user with a good idea, making it take off. Also my C codings skills are not up to producing a windows driver, or a boot up driver. Systems can boot up from network cards, and scsi adapters however, so that might not be nessassary, though I suspect I'd still need to know a low level language to write the hardwares software. If I had the capital, and was confident in my own skills, I would certainly give this a go.

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SirFire
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 01:16
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@topic

I think this would be an easy thing to accomplish.

I mean we have the dual-boot menu, which lets you select which OS to use, adding an entry that activiates the hibernate image using window's own utility (that already does that) seems trivial.

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Three Score
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 07:13
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@adr
oh now that I understand it, yea thats a quite good idea
inspiration: add that to my OS(doublty will get done though)

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Les Horribres
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 07:41
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What makes you think windows doesn't already do that? I mean a good portion of windows MUST stay the same, they probally have a image somewhere and simply load that. Then things like drivers load after.

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Three Score
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 09:31
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All of the kernel is loaded(or I hope so, otherwise windows is retarded) and then it sets other stuff into memory(like gdt, idt and such most likely) and then drivers are loaded

you could just somehow call the kernel _main and then it would be like you rebooted unless it depends on a few other things

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adr
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 11:24
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Quote: "I mean a good portion of windows MUST stay the same, they probally have a image somewhere and simply load that. Then things like drivers load after."


Why load the drivers after? Why not take the image after everything has been loaded that windows needs? Anyway ... I'm sure it's possible too, but I sure as hell ain't gonna do it.

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indi
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 12:15
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Quote: "I've already stated the manufacturer and name of the device you're talking about"

unless your referring to 15 years ago with ramdisks on win95 and os 7/8 then no your talking about something else.

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Torrey
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 12:30
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Quote: "I imagine it could do some pretty wierd things if you happend to change system componants between reboots."


@the_winch:

Actually I hibernate my laptop every time I'm done using it. There was a few times I've swapped components without thinking, and Windows still managed to boot fine with no problems using the image it saved.

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Les Horribres
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 20:23
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Quote: "Why load the drivers after? Why not take the image after everything has been loaded that windows needs? Anyway ... I'm sure it's possible too, but I sure as hell ain't gonna do it."



Plug n' Play probally, not to mention people are asumed idiots, M$ would need to detect if anything has changed A/O make a new image while doing a regular reboot.

There is also the fact that if there is a viral infection and you have an image saved with the viral data in memory, you will be a very happy person.

Also, then if any settings are changed you need to have those changed in the bootfile.


Not meaning a debate, but there must be reason, and this reason is probally related to the asumption that the user is a idiot.

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SirFire
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 21:44 Edited at: 14th Jun 2006 21:44
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Quote: "and this reason is probally related to the asumption that the user is a idiot."


And in the vast majority of cases, that assumption would be true.

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spooky
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Posted: 14th Jun 2006 22:17
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Windows Vista will have all sorts of fast sleep, hibernate and reboot modes, apparently booting in only a few seconds.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx

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Kenjar
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Posted: 15th Jun 2006 00:39
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I've tried them, slower then XP or 2000. So much for progress eh?

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