Why bios(generic) is slow?

[Kim Jin-Kwon]

Why bios(generic) is slow?Well, IMHO, that's because, normal conventional BIOS do spend much of time in
de-compressing its <<modules>>. as you can see those "modular BIOS" banner.
load one module, decomp it, execute it, report module exit status and etc..
256kb is not so vast space for even bios written in full .asm language.
and some modules require the cpu to be in real 'real mode' some others run in something like
flat mode. so there should be some resets also.
hope it helps.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: hcyun at etri.re.kr 
  To: rminnich at lanl.gov 
  Cc: linuxbios at clustermatic.org 
  Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 7:21 PM
  Subject: Why bios(generic) is slow?


  Hi 

  Can you tell me why generic bios is so slow compared to linuxbios. 
  In other word, why linuxbios is fast? 
  I think "do little thing" is not enough to explain x10 time difference. 
  What does bios do other than linuxbios does and where it spend so much time? 

  Regard, 
  Heechul 

  - 
  HeeChul Yun,          
  Embedded S/W Team at ETRI 
  phone: +82-42-860-1673 
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