Boot Comparison
The Project Trailblazer engineers developed a target comparison table shown in Table 4.3. This table compares the “power on to bash prompt” timing and target root filesystem size for the four platforms involved in Project Trailblazer.
| Platform | Power On to bash Prompt Time | Target root Filesystem Size |
|---|---|---|
| Embedded Planet RPX-CLLF, PowerPC 860 | 27 seconds, including 6-second TFTP download of the kernel and RAM disk | 4612KB |
| Brightstar Engineering MediaEngine, StrongArm1100 | 13 seconds, including 6-second TFTP download of the kernel and RAM disk | 4232KB |
| Tri-M MZ104, Pentium (100MHz) | 29 seconds, including 17-second PC BIOS completion time | 4888KB |
| Micron COTS PC, Celeron (400MHz) | 27 seconds, including 20-second PC BIOS completion time | 4888KB |
All the target platforms power up and boot to a bash prompt in under 30 seconds. The fastest is the MediaEngine, at 13 seconds. The RPX-CLLF and MediaEngine boot times include a 6-second TFTP kernel transfer time. This time would be eliminated if the on-board Flash memory stored the kernel image. The x86 MZ104 and COTS PC boot times include the mandatory PC BIOS completion time. The filesystem size similarity shows that the compiled binary files are roughly the same size for x86, ARM, and PowerPC microprocessors.